Word: gao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sure bet that G.O.P. presumptive nominee Senator John McCain will wield the Pentagon's 66-page report as a bludgeon against those asserting the war has stalled and that U.S. troops should be withdrawn. Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic contender, will just as certainly use the GAO report as a stiletto to puncture the Administration's - and McCain's - contention that the troop "surge" is bringing victory in Iraq closer by the day. "Iraq has made considerable progress in the political and diplomatic arenas, but future progress may be slow and uneven," the Pentagon report concluded. "Moreover, Iraq is pursuing...
...current lull in violence, the GAO contends, is like a stool that rests on three legs: the U.S. troop surge, a creaky cease-fire declared by Shi'ite militias loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr and a U.S.-led effort to hire former insurgents to guard their neighborhoods - hardly a platform for sustainable political and social reform. Indeed, the GAO accuses the Pentagon of cherry-picking the information from Iraq that substantiates the claim of progress and ignoring more unpalatable indicators...
...While the Pentagon report declares that "all major violence indicators" have fallen between 40% and 80% "from pre-surge levels," the GAO sees some of that progress as based on the cooperation of Iraqis who remain sharply at odds with one another. The congressional watchdog office cites the so-called "Sons of Iraq" program, a largely Sunni group of militiamen now paid by U.S. taxpayers to keep the peace in their neighborhoods. More than 100,000 strong, the group has yet to reconcile its long-standing differences with the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki...
...Pentagon adage holds that while figures don't lie, liars can figure. That's apt when it comes to measuring the progress of the Iraqi security forces. The GAO cites data showing that only 10% of Iraqi army battalions have reached full operational readiness. In a Pentagon response contained within the GAO report, the Defense Department said a better measure was the share of Iraqi units "in the lead" in combined operations, which it said is 70%. But that "in the lead" phrasing, defense officials concede, is elastic enough to include borderline battalions. There are other shortcomings when it comes...
...along the way, the competing reports measure progress in Iraq by yardsticks of differing lengths. While the GAO said electrical production was lagging, the Pentagon asserted that this was a function of escalating demand for power. Electrical output, it said, now tops what the country was generating before the invasion. The Pentagon also zinged the GAO for using, as an oil-production benchmark, the "arbitrary goal" of 3 million bbl. a day set by the U.S.-run occupation authority immediately following the invasion. More importantly, the Pentagon said, is that petroleum exports are at their highest level since the fall...