Another negative report on Iraq

The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.

How much will it matter to those doing the voting that yet another report on Iraq finds failures to meet the agreed-upon benchmarks?  The draft of the GAO report leaked to the Washington Post should be the coup de grace. 

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

But almost certainly ways will be found to work around it.  There are already suggestions that the report will be altered before the final version becomes available.

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version -- as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

Admittedly, it's very hard to deal with a White House and Republican members of Congress who have no problem with doctoring information before the information is made public and a vote is taken.  Stuff happens.