August 30, 2007 (LPAC)--The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has concluded that the Iraqi government has met only three of the 18 benchmarks laid down for it by the U.S. Congress. This report, preempting the White House's long touted "Report from General Petraeus'' (which LPAC has explained, is actually being written by the White House), rips holes in earlier White House reports claiming a the "surge" to be a success.

The report, which has not been released, as described by the Washington Post today, does not appear to explicitly blame the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki government for this lack of political and security progress, but its conclusions are based on a stricter standard of success or failure imposed on the GAO by the Congress than that mandated on the White House. It is anticipated that the failure to reach the "benchmarks" will provide ammunition for the fight in Congress to cut the funding for the war, or set a date for withdrawal of U.S. troops. But, it also appears that it could be spun to be used as ammunition by those in the Congress who are calling for the ouster of Maliki.

According to the Post, the GAO questions some of the aspects of a White House report last month that claimed much more progress in Iraq. The report concludes that "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced." The GAO concludes that, in fact, violence against civilians has not been reduced and that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not been improved." The report also suggests that future Bush administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgements with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies," according to the Post. The GAO official who leaked the report to the Post said that he "feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version as some officials have said happened with security judgements in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.'' The report still has to be reviewed by the White House and the Pentagon before it is publicly released, next week.