The Government Accountability Office on Monday released a report sharply criticizing Military commanders assessment on stability in Iraq.
The report acknowledges significant gains on the ground, representing 70% decline since June 2007, confirming many of the security improvements that first became apparent last fall are still holding, a number of the figures that have been used to show broader progress in Iraq are either misleading or simply incorrect, the report says.
Administration figures, according to the report, broadly overstate gains in some categories, including the readiness of the Iraqi Army, electricity production and how much money Iraq is spending on its reconstruction.
Going further the report states the security gains themselves rest in large part not on broad-scale advances in political and social reconciliation and a functioning Iraqi government, but on a few specific advances that remain fragile. The relatively calm period rests mostly on the American troop increase, a shaky cease-fire declared by militias loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and an American-led program to pay former insurgents to help keep the peace, the report says.
“Clearly there are substantial changes in the security situation on the ground,” said Nathan Freier, a retired Army officer who served in Iraq in 2005 and 2007 and is now a senior fellow in the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The administration prefers to focus on those improvements, Mr.
Freier said. But the accountability office report, which Mr. Freier
read on Monday, and his own observations in Iraq contain a different
message, he said.“Iraq remains a mixed bag and will continue to do so in perpetuity, to be quite honest,” he added.
The report acknowledges significant gains on the ground, representing 70% decline since June 2007, confirming many of the security improvements that first became apparent last fall are still holding, a number of the figures that have been used to show broader progress in Iraq are either misleading or simply incorrect, the report says.
Administration figures, according to the report, broadly overstate gains in some categories, including the readiness of the Iraqi Army, electricity production and how much money Iraq is spending on its reconstruction.
Going further the report states the security gains themselves rest in large part not on broad-scale advances in political and social reconciliation and a functioning Iraqi government, but on a few specific advances that remain fragile. The relatively calm period rests mostly on the American troop increase, a shaky cease-fire declared by militias loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and an American-led program to pay former insurgents to help keep the peace, the report says.
“Clearly there are substantial changes in the security situation on the ground,” said Nathan Freier, a retired Army officer who served in Iraq in 2005 and 2007 and is now a senior fellow in the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The administration prefers to focus on those improvements, Mr.
Freier said. But the accountability office report, which Mr. Freier
read on Monday, and his own observations in Iraq contain a different
message, he said.“Iraq remains a mixed bag and will continue to do so in perpetuity, to be quite honest,” he added.
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