Military Officials in Iraq Fault GAO Report

Washington Post


A bleak portrait of the political and security situation in Iraq released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office sparked sharp protests from the top U.S. military command in Baghdad, whose officials described it as flawed and "factually incorrect."

The controversy followed last-minute changes made in the final draft of the report after the Defense Department maintained that its conclusions were too harsh and insisted that some of the information it contained -- such as the extent of a fall in the number of Iraqi army units capable of operating without U.S. assistance -- should not appear in the final, unclassified version.

The GAO rejected several changes proposed by the Pentagon and concluded that Iraq had failed to meet all but two of nine security goals Congress had set as part of a list of 18 benchmarks of progress. But grades for two of the seven unmet security benchmarks -- the elimination of havens for militia forces and the deployment of three Iraqi army brigades to assist the U.S. security plan in Baghdad -- were recast to reflect partial progress. Two other benchmarks, one political and one economic, were also described as "partially met."

The report, published days before the Bush administration's own progress report on Iraq, said that only one of eight political goals -- safeguarding minority rights in the Iraqi parliament -- had been met. It found little if any substantive movement on key legislation, including measures to clarify the distribution of oil revenue, schedule provincial elections and change de-Baathification laws......