Why should The Report Formerly Known As Petraeus be allowed to frame this entire September debate? It's written by the White House, with "input" from General Petraeus and many others, and we all know what will come out. We've known since spring.
It's the GAO report that matters, and live today is a Senate Foreign Relations hearing on it. But, even here on the Great Orange Mothership, no attention to the hearing. Anyone want to make a bet that won't be the case for Petraeus's testimony next week? This hearing is going on at 2 PM and will be covered live on C-Span 3 (how much you wanna bet Petraeus is on C-Span1 at the very least).
UPDATE: The report is out, and the headline conclusion: for all the surge, violence against Iraqi civilians is UNCHANGED. ThinkProgress also reports that the Iraqi government met 3 benchmarks, "partially met" 4 (White House pressure obvious there), and failed all other 11.
First off, a disclaimer: I'm the Online Communications Director for John Kerry, who is chairing this hearing. So, you can say that I'm personally invested in this.
But, really, what's a report got to do to get noticed? The GAO is an independent body, tasked by Congress to investigate the progress in Iraq. Independent body ... i.e. Not the White House That Has Every Reason To Spin Their Report. So, in a sane world, we'd all be looking to that report for the official assessment of the happenings in Iraq (taking into account that it passed through the White House on its journey to the light).
But the Administration did such a good job pumping up the "Petraeus Report" as a way of a) controlling the message on the results of the "surge" and b) putting a different face on the war besides George W. Bush. I've heard of polling that shows that support for the war actually goes up just a bit if George W. Bush's name isn't attached to it. That's how unpopular that dude is ... he drags down the poll numbers of a disastrous policy.
Anyway, so now everyone is looking for the White House Report, rather than the GAO Report. But it's the GAO Report that is explicitly covering those "very clear" benchmarks that Mitch McConnell was talking about in that quote on the front page. The benchmarks that Congress wrote to get some "clarity" in whether the surge was working or not. So, the GAO Report (and the hearing on it) should be the focus, not Petraeus's testimony.
We got a peak into the report last week in the WaPost. For those of you who were still on summer holiday ... the news wasn't pretty.
An independent assessment concluding that Iraq has made little political progress in recent months despite an influx of U.S. troops drew fierce objections from the White House on Thursday and provided fresh ammunition for Democrats who want to bring troops home.
A draft report by the Government Accountability Office concluded Iraq has satisfied three of 18 benchmarks set by Congress and partially met two others, a senior administration official said Thursday. None of those are the high-profile political issues such as passage of a national oil revenue sharing law that the Bush administration has said are critical to Iraq's future.
There have been reports that the White House was trying to get "revisions" of the report ... but we find out much, much more in just a few minutes, when the hearing starts.
So, turn on C-Span 3, grab your laptops to debunk any spin, and comment away ... we should pre-empt the White House spin due next week, and hold their feet to the fire if they forced any edits to the GAO Report ...