What are the 18 Benchmarks?

The benchmarks for Iraqi "progress" were laid out by Congress in a May 2007 in an Iraq war funding bill. A synopsis is below, followed by a link.

(i) Constitutional Review

(ii) de-Baathification (I think un-doing it)

(iii) Equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources of the people of Iraq (what's not taken by US Corporations).

(iv) Procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.

(v) Provincial election procedures.

(vi) Amnesty.

(vii) Militia disarmament program.

(viii) Services committees to support Baghdad Security Plan.

(ix) Three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.

(x) Providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan.

(xi) Even handed enforcement of the law by Iraqi Security Forces.

(xii) No safe haven for any outlaws.

(xiii) Reducing sectarian violence and eliminating militia control of local security.

(xiv) Joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad.

(xv) Increasing the number of independent Iraqi security forces.

(xvi) Protecting the rights of minority political parties.

(xvii) Equitable spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects.

(xviii) No false accusations of Iraqi Security Forces by Iraqi politicians.

Maybe we should write some benchmarks for the Democrats: Meet 80% of them by September 2008 and we won't storm the Bastille.

Elaboration on the Iraq benchmarks can be found at Free Frank Warner.

For my personal views on the benchmarks, see More Make Believe from the Democrats: Benchmarks by which to Blame the Iraqis.

More Make Believe from the Democrats: Benchmarks by which to Blame the Iraqis

Democrats seem to understand that they have public support to extract the US from Iraq. They're getting some good press today with Associated Press reporting, "Democrats not backing down on Iraq Bill." They also seem to be considering Congressman John Murtha's idea of limiting the duration of funding through July, contingent on "benchmarks" that the Iraqi government is to achieve.

It's the later part that is generally suspect. True enough that Iraqi's aren't showing the "resolve" necessary to solve the "problems" in Iraq. But the unraveling of Iraq's society is due predominantly to US policies. Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin knew in advance we were going to war on false pretenses, and now hides behind false notions that he was sworn to secrecy and couldn't divulge that fact:

I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy." Durbin went on to say "We can't walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress.

That, as we all know, is BS. Durbin is also sworn to protect the Constitution against all foes, external and internal. Ray MacGovern, who's getting a lot of air play on this blog reacted to the Durbin blather as follows:

Classification is to protect sources and methods. It’s not to protect presidents, OK? And so, he should have come out and said, “Look, this is not what I’m hearing in the Intelligence Committee. Hold the presses. We’re not going to go to war until I get satisfaction.” He didn’t do that.

And now we're in a war, and Iraq is taking the brunt of it, and these same Democratic politicians are saying Iraq needs to meet benchmarks? As predicted predicted by Robert Fisk and Gary Younge, the US Iraq exit strategy is going to be "Blame the Iraqis." "Oops. They didn't meet their benchmarks for resolving their problems. We gotta go. Sorree." It's pathetic. More make believe by the Democrats.

Sources:

References to Durbin and McGovern from DemocracyNow, May 1, 2007.

misspellings: Durban, bench mark, ray macgovern, secracy
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Stop Blaming the Iraqis for US Crimes Against Peace

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The right wing noise machine has gotten to a lot of people. The machine wants us to believe Iraqis are barbarians, and despite US good will, they are destined to fight with each other. This is the foundation of the US exit strategy; "It's OK to abandon primitive, dark-skinned Arabs that don't want democracy. We tried, but these uncivilized people don't appreciate our sacrifices."

No mention of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) undermining Iraq's civil and security structure, no mention of the CPA opening Iraq's economy to looting by transnational corporations (as if there could be fair competition when 12-years of sanctions made Iraqi company's weak), no mention that the US created a power vacuum, no mention that Ambassador Negroponte and Colonel James Steele introduced the Salvadoran death squad model in Iraq, no mention that the US aggressive war of choice triggered this chaos and constitutes a crime against peace.

No mention that the US is responsible for the chaos and for reparations to Iraq, but that the US is in such deep debt that it will be hard to convince US tax payers to fund reparations. Instead, the so-called "leaders" on both sides of the political spectrum would have us believe that the Iraqis are to blame, so we don't owe them anything.

My experience in Washington suggests that the heads of most people in Washington are spinning with day-to-day deadlines. They have not stopped to think about what I've written above. If they took the time, they might realize that imposing benchmarks on the Iraqis is unfair. Granted, the Iraqis must take the lead in solving the problems facing them; however, the US is responsible for creating many of the problems and is thus responsible for the financial support to enable a process to resolve them.

Update: Unfortunately, the "blame-the-Iraqi" framing of reality has been adopted by the Democratic leadership: "Meet our benchmarks or else."

During the Nuremberg trials, the chief American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, stated:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

[2]

In other words, Bush and the US citizens are responsible for "the accumulated evil of the whole."
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Exit Strategy for Iraq: Blame the Iraqis

In case it needs to be said, the strategy for extricating the US from Iraq will be to say that "We tried to give Iraq freedom, but they're too primative to grab the golden ring." In other words, "It's not our fault the Iraqi's are unable to seize this golden opportunity."

Both Robert Fisk and Gary Younge have made this observation. They both work for British newspapers.

Keep in mind that this is the strategy for winning the minds of the US public. The rest of the world won't buy this line. The US will have created more animosity and terrorists (AKA blowback). If we want future security in the US, we need to punish those who started the Iraqi war of aggression. This will buy some good will from people in the world who despise the US. It will help the US gain some of its lost credibility.

Punishing Bush and his war-of-aggression conspirators won't solve all ills, but it would make things better.

Surely the blame lies with Bush for starting the war of aggression. But that might be too sweeping for some to swallow. Here's a more specific example from an article by Peter Maass

A scathing report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, still in draft form [in May 2005] but posted on the center's Web site, blames senior American officials for these failures of Iraqi will. ''The police and the bulk of the security forces were given grossly inadequate training, equipment, facilities, transport and protection,'' states the report, written by Anthony Cordesman, a military expert and former Pentagon official. ''These problems were then compounded by recruiting U.S. police advisers -- some more for U.S. domestic political reasons than out of any competence for the job -- with no area expertise and little or no real knowledge of the mission that the Iraqi security and police forces actually had to perform.'' The report seems to be referring to, among others, Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, who was the first police adviser to L Paul Bremer III, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Kerik left after three and a half months. Although the report notes some progress in recent months, it concludes: ''Unprepared Iraqis were sent out to die. . . The fact that some died as a result of U.S. incompetence and neglect was the equivalent of bureaucratic murder.''