Dubious Benchmarks By Max Boot

Back in May when Congress reluctantly passed a supplemental appropriation to fund American operations in Iraq one of the conditions attached to the bill was that the administration had to come back by July 15 with a report on whether the government of Iraq was making “satisfactory” progress on a list of 18 benchmarks. (Another report card is due in September.) The result was the much-ballyhooed Initial Benchmark Assessment Report released by the White House yesterday.

This led to predictable headlines about “mixed results” in Iraq, with some publications even counting up the number of “satisfactory” and “unsatisfactory” grades given to the Iraqis. (The total, in case you’re wondering: eight satisfactories, eight unsatisfactories, two mixed.)

After reading the report, I can only conclude that the “unsatisfactory” grade must go to Congress for burdening the executive branch with meaningless paperwork. Many of the “benchmarks” measure such areas as “forming a constitutional review committee and then completing the constitutional review”; “enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions”; and “enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong militia disarmament program.” And as the report notes:

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