Word: gao
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...mildly titled June 23 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a glass-half-empty study of the vexations that continue to hamper U.S. efforts in Iraq as the war enters its sixth summer. While the GAO doesn't contradict a Pentagon report that indicates violence in Iraq has dropped significantly, it claims the improvement is based on a rickety foundation provided by the now slowing U.S. troop surge, a creaky cease-fire with Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and a U.S.-led effort to recruit former insurgents for policing--not on any sustained reforms needed for lasting...
...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...
...conflict between the two reports was reflected in the press coverage they generated. Both the New York Times and Washington Post led with the bleak assessment contained in the GAO study, while the Wall Street Journal highlighted what it called a "generally upbeat assessment" of Iraq's current security and political situation. It relegated the GAO's findings to the final three paragraphs of a 17-paragraph story. But it did lead with bad news from the Pentagon report: claims that Iran continues to funnel money to militias inside Iraq, and that Tehran "may well pose the greatest long-term...