The issue is not whether Bush will aceept benchmarks, but if he will accept benchmarks with consequences if they are not met.
Bush likes to say every few months that progress is being made in Iraq, but offers no measures, or even worse, false measures of that success. His latest pronoucement several weeks ago that the surge was beginning to show results is evident from the fact that civilian deaths are down in Iraq. What he didnt say is that the measure he used exluded deaths by car bombs.
Quote:
Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.
Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population - one of the surge's main goals.
"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.
Bush administration officials have pointed to a dramatic decline in one category of deaths - the bodies dumped daily in Baghdad streets, which officials call sectarian murders - as evidence that the security plan is working. Bush said this week that that number had declined by 50 percent, a number confirmed by statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers.
But the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising, the same statistics show - up from 323 in March, the first full month of the security plan, to 365 through April 24.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwash...hington_nation
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The latest funding bill passed by the House, which he will veto if it gets to his desk, has 16 benchmarks:
he President shall transmit to the Congress a report in classified and unclassified form, on or before July 13, 2007, detailing--
(1) the progress the Government of Iraq has made in--
(A) giving the United States Armed Forces and Iraqi Security Forces the authority to pursue all extremists, including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias;
(B) delivering necessary Iraqi Security Forces for Baghdad and protecting such Forces from political interference;
(C) intensifying efforts to build balanced security forces throughout Iraq that provide even-handed security for all Iraqis;
(D) ensuring that Iraq's political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the Iraqi Security Forces;
(E) eliminating militia control of local security;
(F) establishing a strong militia disarmament program;
(G) ensuring fair and just enforcement of laws;
(H) establishing political, media, economic, and service committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan;
(I) eradicating safe havens;
(J) reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq; and
(K) ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi Parliament are protected; and
(2) whether the Government of Iraq has--
(A) enacted a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis;
(B) adopted legislation necessary for the conduct of provincial and local elections, taken steps to implement such legislation, and set a schedule to conduct provincial and local elections;
(C) reformed current laws governing the de-Baathification process to allow for more equitable treatment of individuals affected by such laws;
(D) amended the Constitution of Iraq consistent with the principles contained in article 137 of such Constitution; and
(E) allocated and begun expenditure of $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis.
After 4 years of war and more than 2 years of an elected Iraq government in place, I think these are broad enough (without specific metric measures) for any reasonable person to accept
We shall see what Bush will agree of if he will insist on even less specific and measurable "goals" rather than true benchmarks of progress...and what consequences he will accept if benchmarks are not met.