By Dan Froomkin
Washington Post, 06 February 2007
Here's a story that has gotten almost no attention whatsoever: The Iraqi government appears to have failed to achieve the very first concrete benchmark that White House officials announced as part of the new combined US-Iraqi security push in Baghdad.
At a White House briefing on January 10 by two anonymous senior administration officials, one made this startlingly verifiable promise to a press corps highly skeptical of the administration's amorphous benchmarks for Iraq:
"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, here's -- but you're going to have to -- you're going to have some opportunities to judge very quickly. The Iraqis are going to have three brigades within Baghdad within a little more than a month. They have committed to trying to get one brigade in, I think, by the first of February, and two more by the 15th. . . .
"So people are going to be able to see pretty quickly that the Iraqis are or are not stepping up. And that provides the ability to judge."
Alright, so now it's past the first of the month, and how's it going?
Steven R. Hurst reported on Thursday (Feb. 1) for the Associated Press: "Local commanders. . . . said only about 2,000 of the additional troops had reached Baghdad or were nearby. . . .
"An Iraqi army brigade from Irbil, about 3,000 men in principle, will have at most 1,500 men when it finally arrives in Baghdad. The commander says 95 percent of the men don't speak Arabic. A brigade from Sulaimaniyah, also in the Kurdish north, has reached the Muthana Airport in central Baghdad, but it is only 1,000-men strong, not the expected 3,000."
At a Defense Department briefing on Friday (Feb. 2) Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace confirmed that Iraqi troop strength is not where it ought to be.
" Q Mr. Secretary, yesterday General Casey said that of the Iraqi units that have shown up with the new Baghdad security plan, they are at 55 to 65 percent strength. Do you consider that meeting the commitment that the Iraqis made?
" SEC. GATES: Well, I think that partly it will depend on how quickly they get back up to strength. . . . I guess my answer is, 55 percent probably isn't good enough. But I'm not sure that that's -- what the end strength of that unit is going to be when the time comes for it to go into combat.
" General, do you want to --
" GEN. PACE: Well, I think the secretary has it right. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that contrary to what has happened in the past, the units that were designated to arrive in Baghdad have begun to arrive on the schedule they were supposed to be there. The first brigade is there; the second brigade is en route, and the third brigade will foreclose by the end of February.
" However, you're correct in that right now, the initial units got there with about 60 percent. And therefore, they do need to continue to flesh out those units, get all those who may be home taking their money to their families, and get them in. So they're not at the level we would like them to be total strength-wise, but they are showing up on the time on they said they would.
" Q Whatever the reason, does that -- does a unit, an Iraqi unit at two-thirds strength, constitute meeting their part of the deal here?
" GEN. PACE: It needs to be stronger than that."
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Citation: Dan Froomkin. "First Benchmark Missed?," Washington Post, 06 February 2007.
Original URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
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