Well, here we are at long last. The start of the official surge reports week, which will be deliberately mixed in with 9/11 anniversaries, as columnist Frank Rich noted yesterday.

During this week Congress and the American public are going to be treated to testimony by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, our newest and duly anointed “wise men” regarding the effectiveness of the surge. This week promises to be a real life version of the saying by well known geopolitical analyst Groucho Marx, “Who are you going to believe, your eyes or me”? For a ground level and reality based view see this piece in the New York Times yesterday. 

Hmm, that reminds me, that in the 1960s Dick Cheney was hiding behind his wife to avoid the draft.  Now 40 years later he and President Bush are hiding behind Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, as in, only an anti-American scum sucker would dare question their forthcoming wisdom to stay the course. As the New York Times editorialized, “Mr. Bush, deeply unpopular with the American people, is counting on the general to restore credibility to his discredited Iraq policy. He frequently refers to the escalation of American forces last January as General Petraeus’s strategy – as if it were not his own creation.“

Just what is it with Republicans and this passion for human shields? Perhaps another kind of festish; like Sen. Craig, only more perverse, considering the stakes in human lives. 

Of course, even if Petraeus and Crocker did fall on their swords and say something OTHER than the party line, i.e., the surge is working; we just need to give it more time, there is no reason to expect that President Bush would heed their advice. As evidence just remember how well received were the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, another group of “wise men” when it was unveiled last fall. 

Though, in fairness to Gen. Petraeus, in a little noted progress report to the troops last week, he did note, “Many of us had hoped this summer would be a time of tangible political progress at the national level as well. One of the justifications for the surge, after all, was that it would help create the space for Iraqi leaders to tackle the tough questions and agree on key pieces of “national reconciliation” legislation. It has not worked out as we had hoped.” As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “you think?” 

We’ve already had the release of some outside reports, notably Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq: Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and The Report of the Independent Commission On the Security Forces of Iraq, chaired by former Marine Gen. James L. Jones, released last Thursday. 

The GAO report was certainly noteworthy, concluding that:

As of August 30, 2007, the Iraqi government met 3, partially met 4, and did not meet 11 of its 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.

But for sheer dismal reading it is hard to beat the 152-page Jones report on the overall Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). Admittedly it covers a lot of ground, from the regular Iraqi military to the Ministry of Interior. And some of the news is good, but more of it is bad. Remember that it is progress of the ISF which is supposedly key to the American presence. As President Bush famously put it, as the Iraqi’s stand up, we’ll stand down. For example, it says, “While severely deficient in combat support and combat service support capabilities, the new Iraqi armed forces, especially the Army, show clear evidence of developing the baseline infrastructures that lead to the successful formation of a national defense capability.” But at the end of the same paragraph it says, “the ISF will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-19 months.”

But the fighting in Iraq in the future will be less about fighting al-Qaeda, important as that is, and more on the fighting between and among Sunni and Shiite factions. That places a greater priority on the interior security forces such as the police. And here the news is lousy.

The report says with regard to the Ministry of Interior, “The Ministry of Interior is a ministry in name only. It is widely regarded as being dysfunctional and sectarian, and suffers from ineffective leadership. Such fundamental flaws represent a serious obstacle to achieving the levels of readiness, capability, and effectiveness in police and border security forces that are essential for internal security and stability in Iraq.”

If you think I am being partisan here consider what Anthony Cordsman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was one of the outside experts briefing the commission, wrote: 

The Commission findings provide a list of real problems, but do not address the key issue of whether the present approach to creating an Iraqi Police Force is actually workable. (pp. 93-108) Many findings could only apply if Iraq was a united country, sectarian and ethnic tensions and violence were not critical, and the central government was actually in full control of the country. This part of the report is often decoupled from the fundamental realities of civil conflict in Iraq.

But the most frightening part is this conclusion: 

Once again, the Commission findings are accurate. Its findings, however, omit a critical failure in US policy and planning. There is no public US plan that describes the level of activity and resources that the US must devote to ISF activity over the coming years, the planned linkage between ISF development and US force levels in Iraq, and the linkage between success in creating the ISF and success in Iraqi political accommodation or conciliation.

US officials have publicly stated that some elements of such a plan exist in classified form [Emphasis added]. Congressional support, and support by the American people, cannot, however, be based on good intentions and a request for a blank check. Moreover, the long history of past failures in ISF development requires public examination of the current and future effort, and far more objective measures of time, level of effort, cost, and effectiveness.

Yes, right, a classified plan for victory. Nixon had one for winning the war in Vietnam too. We saw how well that worked out.

Related posts:

1. Once more unto the Afghanistan breach, dear friends, once more
2. Out with the old, in with the new
3. Can’t anyone here manage a contract?
4. Petraeus off the mark on Pakistan
5. Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends: The Afpak Sideshow