Word: gao
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...lurches into its sixth hot summer, is in the eye of the beholder. That much is clear from the release this week of a pair of U.S. government reports that offer dueling assessments of the situation in Iraq - a glass-half-empty version from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and a glass-half-full account from (surprise!) the Pentagon...
...Both reports acknowledge that the slow and uneven political progress in Iraq remains fragile and could jeopardize the prospects for long-term success. But the Pentagon study cites a slew of indicators suggesting that things are moving in the right direction. The GAO counters by saying, in effect, that the Pentagon's assessment is little more than a house of cards built upon the shifting sands of Iraq's internal political conflicts. Even a house of cards, the GAO implies, can appear stable in a snapshot...
...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the Pentagon's 66-page report as a bludgeon against those asserting the war has stalled and that U.S. troops should be withdrawn.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...
...fact that they were able to pull off raising that much money was great, especially since there were so many students there,” said Lin Gao ’10, co-president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Chinese Student Association (CSA) and a native of the Sichuan province...