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Originally Posted by ubertuber
Benchmarks are better than timetables for all concerned, save the President.
Whether we leave this week or next year, the Iraqis would benefit from us achieving at least a couple of tangible goals.
Congress gets to look like they care about the issue rather than humiliating the president.
Most of all, benchmarks would mean that for continued funding, President Bush would have to make a case for progress going down a bulleted list. If there's progress, so much the better for the Iraqis, the troops, and for us. If there isn't the media glare will be far uglier for Bush than anything a forced withdrawal would have accomplished.
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Show me any recent news reports that support the idea of any Iraqi in or appointed by the Iraqi government supporting a pluralistic Iraq within it's present borders, (i.e. a Shi'a government official....) and who is describing goals/methods to achieve that.
The only "benchmark" I see the leaders of the Iraqi government supporting are Shi'a political dominance and a summer vacation.
IMO, it is long past the point of benchmarks...they are indistinguishable from four years of "they'll stand up, so we can stand down", rhetoric. The people in the Iraqi government are in it for the power and the money, and the Baker ISG report plainly told us that most Iraqi troops refuse to serve away from their home districts, and take a week off per month to bring their pay home to their families.....bullshit, considering that they refused to serve very far from home, in the first place. Further, the ISG found that being AWOL is common and does not result in consequences to the absent Iraqi soldier.
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http://bakerinstitute.org/Pubs/iraqs...p_findings.pdf
Page 12:
.....Significant questions remain about the ethnic composition and loyalties of some Iraqi
units—specifically, whether they will carry out missions on behalf of national goals instead of a
sectarian agenda. Of Iraq’s 10 planned divisions, those that are even-numbered are made up of
Iraqis who signed up to serve in a specific area, and they have been reluctant to redeploy to other
areas of the country. As a result, elements of the Army have refused to carry out missions......
Page 13
......Units lack personnel. Soldiers are on leave one week a month so that they can visit their
families and take them their pay. Soldiers are paid in cash because there is no banking
system. Soldiers are given leave liberally and face no penalties for absence without leave. Unit
readiness rates are low, often at 50 percent or less........
.....Iraqi police cannot control crime, and they routinely engage in sectarian violence,
including the unnecessary detention, torture, and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians. The
police are organized under the Ministry of the Interior, which is confronted by corruption and
militia infiltration and lacks control over police in the provinces.
The United States and the Iraqi government recognize the importance of reform. The
current Minister of the Interior has called for purging militia members and criminals from the
police. But he has little police experience or base of support. There is no clear Iraqi or U.S.
agreement on the character and mission of the police. U.S. authorities do not know with
precision the composition and membership of the various police forces, nor the disposition of
their funds and equipment. There are ample reports of Iraqi police officers participating in
training in order to obtain a weapon, uniform, and ammunition for use in sectarian violence.
Some are on the payroll but don’t show up for work. In the words of a senior American general,
“2006 was supposed to be ‘the year of the police’ but it hasn’t materialized that way......
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There is no justification for "benchmarks", because there is no commitment evident, from Iraqis themselves, to preserve the existing government, borders, or ehtnic diversity in it's current distribution in a united Iraq.
There is no "there", "there"....nothing that Iraqis are willing to fight and die for....so why should Americans be making a coninued, open ended, life and death sacrifice, to give "benchmarks more time".....more time for more Americans to be killed, with no evidence of increased Iraqi commitment to preserve and advance what Americans are ordered to fight and die to maintain, until "they stand up"!
C'mon, uber....."supporting the troops" should not mean leaving them in a place, with no timetable for withdrawal, after the president's hand picked Iraq assessment committee, led by one of his family's closest and most supportive friend and "fixer", described the local military and the police, after a 42 month effort, (as of last fall) to "stand them up", to provide security for the sustainability of their own country in it's present politcal form....
Waiting for "benchmarks" to "take hold", and nothing more.....is not to be taken seriously, IMO...in view of the amount of American time, money, and lives to achieve an Iraqi "stand up"....with so little commitment indicated coming from Iraqis.....in the course of such a long period of time, US encouragement, and the incentive of a peaceful, "dictator free" environment to live and build a future in.
This is over....the Baker ISG report says so.....and 5 months later, nothing has happened to contradict it's findings....