And 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 report says. 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.
"The New Way Forward in Iraq" isn't moving forward quite as swiftly as the president anticipated. Are you shocked?
[T]he president set out that plan as something that would take 12 to 18 months and would include achievements like enacting a law to regulate Iraq’s oil industry and handing all of Iraq’s provinces over to Iraqi control, the report says. As of this week, only 9 of 18 provinces had been handed over, according to the report, and the crucial oil law remains to be enacted. ...
Still more important, the report asserts, the administration’s plan is not a strategy at all, but more a series of operational prescriptions scattered among various documents reviewed by the accountability office.
“A strategic plan should be a plan that takes you not only through the short term,” said Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the accountability office.
“If the New Way Forward only takes you through July 2008, then you don’t have any guidance for achieving an Iraq that can do everything on its own,” including dealing with the threat of terrorism and defending its own borders, Mr. Christoff said.
What of the president's Vietnamization plan in Iraq? The plan to hand off security to Iraqi troops that we're training to replace US troops?
[I]n an analysis based on a classified study of Iraqi Army battalions, the office concludes that just 10 percent of them are capable of operating independently in counterinsurgency operations and that even then they rely on American support.
The Pentagon has a much different definition of "capable" and "ready."
[T]he office essentially concludes that the Pentagon is claiming that units with far lower readiness grades are ready to lead than it did in the past.
It's time for a new plan: withdraw.
