Items not measured in the benchmarks

Opinion Journal takes a look at some of the non-military progress that has occurred in Iraq, according to Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

Consider some excerpts from Mr. Crocker's testimony. The Iraqi government puts its cell phone spectrum up for auction: It nets a better-than-expected sum of nearly $4 billion. At a recent conference in Dubai, "hundreds of Iraqi businessmen met an equal number of foreign investors newly interested in acquiring shares of business in Iraq." Iraqi oil is now flowing out of the country via Turkish pipelines, and the International Monetary Fund predicts economic growth for Iraq of 6% this year.

In the vicinity of Abu Ghraib, 1,700 men--many of them former Sunni insurgents--have joined the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Security Forces. The Iraqi government is quietly offering jobs or retirement packages to thousands of former soldiers, many of them one-time members of the Baath Party. Significantly, it is doing so without taking the politically sensitive steps of declaring a general amnesty or enacting legislation on de-Baathification.

As Mr. Crocker notes, these developments "are neither measured in benchmarks nor visible to those far from Baghdad." It's a point that seems to have been missed by Democrats on the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, as well as by such Republicans as John Warner and Dick Lugar. Their collective view seems to be that Iraq is a lost cause because the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has failed to achieve "national reconciliation," on the grounds that a series of legislative benchmarks have still not been met.

Journal editors are too kind when they say these points seem to have been missed by Democrats and "thoughtful" Republicans.  They've been deliberately ignored.

Comments

[billp37]

Whitman's selection of Ambassador Ryan Crocker [1971 English major] to deliver the 2009 commencement address on the 30th anniversary of the Iran Revolution grossed us out for the reason evidence suggests that Crocker was part of a illegal conspiracy to incite Saddam Hussein to attack Iran.

http://home.comcast.net/~bpayne37/whitman59/whitman59after.htm#dougmclane

[Tom Bowler]

What is the evidence, Bill?