The Report and The Spin
After a quick scroll down the line up of today’s posts, it does not appear that my colleagues have directly posted on the subject of the Interim (Iraq) Benchmark Assessment Report (as officially released vs. leaked and/or speculated), nor on the President’s related press conference earlier today.
So for those of you who are hungry for the basics but have not yet had a chance to go scavenging around for the them, I thought the following set of links might be helpful …
The President’s Press Conference
In addition, I’d love to hear from readers their reactions … so please, consider this an open thread of sorts, chime in, and I’ll try to review all inputs (from here and the open thread I opened earlier this evening at Central Sanity), and then perhaps publish, over the weekend or early next week, a round up of “views from the street.”
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5 Responses to “The Report and The Spin”
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I’m not sure how to interpret the current results. Actually, what I’d like to do is wait until the next time they release a “benchmark assessment” report, come back to this one, and compare and contrast the results. Rather than just interpreting arbitrary benchmarks on there own merits, it’ll be so much easier to see if there’s progress or regress.
sheep – Do we wait a Friedman unit or longer? The GAO cannot get info on Iraqis troop readiness, what makes you think this will change in two Fried units?
This from Pete’s earlier post(O’Connor and ISG) is interesting:
A text search of the Whitehouse transcript of W’s presser yields 37 uses of al-Qaeda, 0 insurgents/insurgency and 4 instances of sectarian(violence). For years W has inflated the al-Qeda threat in Iraq over internal strife, it continues today. As his credibility approaches ZERO…
Like all news, this left me with consternation and worry. It’s not all bad. It’s certainly not all good.
The biggest disappointment was the Maliki governement. While Americans agonize over what to do, the Iraqis just squabble among themselves.
I’m wondering what good are all our proposals and plans for solutions (like separation into semi-autonomous regions) if their government can’t make a move. We can’t topple this government and start over, so we’re stuck with a seemingly insoluble situation at the very heart of the Iraqis’ problems.
While the President gets all the mileage he can out of the AQ threat, the threat itself can’t be dismissed.
Their renewed concentration in Pakistan/Afghanistan does complicate the regional picture a great deal, as does the role Iraq plays as a recruiting poster for recruits.
I fret. I worry. What will Congress do? What will the President do? What SHOULD they do?