And you Righties keep claiming they have or will, yet it has not happened.

It HAS, they HAVE and they ARE.

Then if it has happened its time to go. Oh wait, they have not or we would be gone.

So was Zell...lol
You have no Democratic tendencies at all.
If it walks like a Duck, Looks like a Duck and sounds like a Duck....it's a Duck!

__________________
Proud Supporter Of: St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

The occupation of Iraq will not end until it ceases to be profitable and they run out of ignoramuses who are willing to go play "war".

High margin, big ticket war material- all on the government's dime!
Damned good business...
rx

__________________


"I'm able to multi-task,
I can write and piss you off at the same time"

You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war Jackson Brown

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.
Iraq Benchmark Report Card

One Year After the Surge

January 24, 2008
Total Benchmarks: 3 of 18 Accomplished

On the one year anniversary of President Bush’s State of the Union address justifying his "New Way Forward" in Iraq, it is clear that the surge has failed to meet its objectives. One year ago, the president pledged that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." Despite the fact that the Iraqi government has only met three of the 18 benchmarks laid out last year, an end to U.S. military and financial commitment is nowhere in sight.

The purpose of the surge was to provide the “breathing space” for political reconciliation to occur. Yet over one year later, political progress has been scant, and what progress has been made is not durable. The Iraqis have not made the difficult political compromises necessary for national reconciliation, and an indefinite U.S. presence in the region will not inspire them to do so. Despite the best efforts of our military men and women in creating a temporary lull in violence, substantial advancement toward a sustainable and independent Iraq has not been made.

In order to motivate Iraq’s political leaders, the United States must set a date certain for withdrawal. Only then will the Iraqis make the difficult political compromises necessary for national reconciliation. While redeploying our forces over the next 10-12 months, the United States must initiate a diplomatic surge to ensure that all of Iraq’s neighbors are involved constructively in Iraq’s future. Only by implementing a [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. in Iraq will the United States be able to take control of its own national security interests in the country and the greater Middle East.

Government Benchmarks: 2 of 8 Accomplished

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. Unmet
[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. Partial
4. Form semi-autonomous regions. Unmet
5. Hold provincial elections. Unmet
6. Address amnesty. Unmet
8. Establish support for Baghdad Security Plan. Met
16. Ensure minority rights in Iraqi legislature. Met
18. Keep Iraqi Security Forces free from partisan interference. Unmet


Security Benchmarks: 1 of 8 Accomplished

7. Disarm militias. Unmet
9. Provide military support in Baghdad. Partial
10. Empower Iraqi Security Forces.Partial
11. Ensure impartial law enforcement. Unmet
12. Establist support for Baghdad Security Plan by Maliki government. Unmet
13. Reduce sectarian violence.Partial
14. Establish neighborhood security in Baghdad. Met
15. Increase independent Iraqi Security Focres Unmet


Economic Benchmarks: 0 of 2 Accomplished

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. Unmet
[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. Partial

__________________

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.





Government Accountability Office Report Says Iraq Has Not Met 11 of 18 Benchmarks

Tuesday, September 04, 2007


WASHINGTON — Congress' research arm has delivered a slightly better but still-grim picture of political and security progress in Iraq following pressure on the agency to revise a draft audit that was crafted to accompany a widely anticipated report from U.S. officials in Iraq.
The Government Accountability Office's independent analysis comes the week before Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Multinational Forces in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker present their findings on Iraqi government success in meeting 18 benchmarks laid out by the U.S. Congress.
[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. .
The GAO report found that the government in Baghdad has met only three out of 18 goals it set out to achieve: establishing joint security stations in Baghdad, ensuring minority rights in the Iraqi legislature, and creating support committees for the Baghdad security plan.
It made partial progress on four benchmarks -- an upgrade from two after White House pressure. GAO concluded the Iraqis had failed to make progress on 11 of 18 benchmarks.
"Overall key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," said the GAO chief, U.S. Comptroller David Walker in Senate hearing on Tuesday
Among the benchmarks not met, GAO found that the constitutional review process is not complete, and laws on de-Baathification, oil revenue-sharing, provincial elections and amnesty have not passed; the number of Iraqi army units capable of independent operations had decreased from March 2007 to July 2007; and widespread violence has compromised the government's ability to protect human rights.
The report said it is unclear whether sectarian violence had decreased because "it is difficult to measure whether the perpetrators’ intents were sectarian in nature, and other measures of population security show differing trends."
Even with the slight changes, the White House dismissed the findings as a static representation of events in Iraq.
"Everyone was aware that some progress on the benchmarks could be seen on a number of the benchmarks," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "One didn't really have to travel to Iraq to come to that conclusion. I'm not aware that anyone expected the benchmarks to be completed by September."
Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, MNF-I spokesman in Baghdad, told FOX News on Monday that Petraeus will present several statistics in his report to Congress next week that indicate successes since June operations went into full swing.
Among them, security attacks are down 40 percent since the surge began, ethno-sectarian attacks between Shiites and Sunnis are half of what they were in December 2006 before the surge began.
U.S. forces found 4,300 weapons caches between January and August this year, compared to 2,700 in all of 2006.
Bergner said he thought the GAO report used too tough a methodology in determining whether a benchmark had been met or not, leaving little room to examine and evaluate degrees of progress.
Bergner also noted that President Bush's and Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to Anbar province this past weekend would have been unthinkable six to eight months ago. Bush said during the trip that some U.S. forces could be sent home if security across Iraq improves as it has in Anbar province, a former hotbed of Sunni insurgency.
Bergner added that it would have been inconceivable for Sunni leader Sheikh Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, to sit down with the Shiite central government as he did Monday while flying with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to Anbar.
The reports are setting the next stage for congressional debate over the usefulness of keeping troops in Iraq. On Tuesday, Democrats said the GAO report showed that Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq was failing because Baghdad was not making the political progress needed to tamp down sectarian violence.
"No matter what spin we may hear in the coming days, this independent assessment is a failing grade for a policy that simply isn't working," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
"The independent GAO report released today contrasts sharply with President Bushs stay-the-course Iraq strategy. The GAO report is the latest in a series of assessments to conclude that the Iraqi government has failed to meet nearly every political, economic and security benchmark laid out by President Bush himself in January," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But Republicans like House Minority Leader John Boehner said Democrats have "invested their political fortunes in failure in Iraq" and are doing whatever they can to find news to support their claims.
"The GAO report really amounts to asking someone to kick an 80-yard field goal and criticizing them when they came up 20 or 25 yards short. Rather than weighing whether or not Iraqis are making progress toward meeting goals, it asked whether or not they've met them,' Boehner, R-Ohio said. "That's an unfair way to judge our troops' progress, and the report was designed to guarantee an unsatisfactory result."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to speculate what Republican senators would do about Iraq before Petraeus and Crocker deliver their much-anticipated report to Congress next week.
McConnell pointedly would not rule out voting on binding legislation to force President Bush's hand, though he said he is "not going to speculate today about, you know, what the view might be next week after we actually get these reports."
McConnell said he wants the United States to maintain a force in the Middle East — possibly even in Iraq — for decades to come, drawing the comparison of such a deployment to the one that is still in South Korea more than a half century after that theater's war.
"We need a long-term deployment somewhere in the Middle East in the future for two reasons: Al Qaeda and Iran," McConnell said, adding, "I hope that this reaction to Iraq and the highly politicized nature of dealing with Iraq this year doesn't end up in a situation where we just bring all the troops back home and thereby expose us, once again, to the kind of attacks we've had here in the homeland or on American facilities."
McConnell said the location of this force "would be up to the generals to recommend", warning, "I think it is an important reminder — even though no one is suggesting nor ruling out military action with regard to Ira — I think it's an important reminder to Iran that, you know, we're in the neighborhood."
FOX News' Jennifer Griffin and Trish Turner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

__________________

undoubtedly the standards were lowered in the past to make the benchmarks easy to make. the real benchmarks never were. The Iraq army lost control of cities not to long ago.

__________________

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.



Iraq Benchmarks Not Met


"In the year since President Bush announced he was changing course in Iraq with a troop 'surge' and a new strategy, U.S. military and diplomatic officials have begun their own quiet policy shift," [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. reports. "After countless unsuccessful efforts to push Iraqis toward various political, economic and security goals, they have decided to let the Iraqis figure some things out themselves."
In "[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. ," Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, writes: "It is time to admit that the Iraq mission has failed and cut our losses. The notion that Iraq would become a stable, united, secular democracy and be the model for a new Middle East was always an illusion. We should not ask more Americans to die for that illusion."

__________________

Nothing like using out dated statistics to prove your point huh?

A more recent look at benchmarks.


[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.