Report to show Iraqi failures

(AP) — Congressional auditors have determined that the Iraqi government has failed to meet fully the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush’s Iraq war strategy, the Associated Press has learned.

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, will report that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq are unfulfilled ahead of a Sept. 15 deadline for Mr. Bush to give a detailed accounting of the situation eight months after he announced the policy, said three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public, also said the administration is preparing a case to play down its findings, arguing that Congress ordered the GAO to use unfair, “all or nothing” standards when compiling the document.

The GAO is to give a classified briefing about its findings to lawmakers today. It is not clear when its unclassified report will be released but it is due Saturday amid a series of assessments called for in January legislation that authorized Mr. Bush’s plan to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq, where troops now number more than 160,000.

The Pentagon said yesterday that Mr. Bush was likely to get a variety of views from different military officials. Mr. Bush then will deliver his own report to Congress by Sept. 15.

The GAO, the congressional watchdog, is expected to find that the Iraqis have met only modest security goals for Baghdad and none of the major political aims such as passage of an oil law.

“While we’ve seen progress in some areas, it would not surprise me that the GAO would make this assessment given the difficult congressionally mandated measurement they had to follow,” said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council.

An internal White House memorandum, prepared to respond to the GAO findings, says the report will claim that the Iraqis have failed on at least 13 benchmarks. It also says the criteria lawmakers set for the report allow no room to report progress, only absolute success or failure.

The memo argues that the GAO will not present a “true picture” of the situation in Iraq because the standards were “designed to lock in failure,” according to portions of the document read to the AP by an official who has seen it. By contrast, the memo says, a July interim report on the surge called for the administration to report on “progress” made toward reaching the wide-ranging benchmarks.