Here are the reports in the same place, compare and then you decide.


Findings and recommendations by recent studies on the Iraq war:


The Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, chaired by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, released Sept. 6:


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Pretty hard to find any good news in any of the reports. Maybe that's why Bush is looking for a way to back off a bit.

I am trying to keep all reposrts results in one place so that they can been seen togewthewr not one at a time like the admin wants. After all are given we can judge thye Pres response with accuracy.

OKAY sports fans, another report due out today, sept 8. They just keep coming.....and....,coming.



In a report to be released Sunday, a panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Institute of Peace calls for a 50 percent reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq within three years and a total withdrawal and handover of security to the Iraqi military in five years.

"The United States faces too many challenges around the world to continue its current level of effort in Iraq, or even the deployment that was in place before the surge," the report says. " . . . It is time to chart a clearer path forward."

The panel includes many of the experts that advised the Iraq Study Group panel led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Democratic congressman Lee H. Hamilton, which issued its report last December. Many of its recommendations have since been adopted, some reluctantly, by the Bush administration. The U.S. Institute of Peace ran the Baker-Hamilton report and assembled the experts.


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A glimpse into thye startegy that Bush will be pushing.


WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Bush gives Congress and the nation his status report on Iraq this week, he is likely to cast the unpopular war in grand terms, as a long-haul, strategic investment in a better Middle East.

His evidence that Iraq is worth the gamble and sacrifice, however, relies largely on the fruits of a new U.S. willingness to indulge Iraq's local, parochial politics for what may be short-term gain.

The startling alliance of U.S. forces and Sunni tribes that allowed Bush to make a surprise visit to Anbar province last week is expedient. It has reduced violence and allowed a window for economic development. But it could backfire on U.S. forces or unintentionally hasten a civil war.

This month's string of status reports on the war, now in its fifth year, gives disappointing grades to Iraq's central government, Army and police, the focus of Bush's current escalation of troops and the institutions the U.S. had considered the most critical to success.


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Here is where the real war is fought--stats! It is all about stats!


WASHINGTON (AP) -- In vertical bars of blue, green, gray and red, a briefing chart prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency says what Gen. David Petraeus won't.

Insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians, their security forces and U.S. troops remain high, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. It is a conclusion that the well-regarded Army officer who is the top U.S. commander in Iraq is expected to try to counter when he and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, testify before Congress on Monday and Tuesday.

More than four years into a conflict initially thought to be a cakewalk, the war has become a battle of statistics, graphs and conflicting assessments of progress in a country of more than 27 million people.


SOURCE

Redefining goals? An adjustment to win votes? What happened to the victory or nothing BS?


WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 — Nearly two years ago, President Bush tried to avert an incipient rebellion in Congress over Iraq by presenting a new strategy that he said would be a prelude to a decrease in American forces. He began the effort with a speech at the United States Naval Academy where midshipmen interrupted him with hearty cheers.

Behind him, the White House had erected a huge backdrop emblazoned with the words: “Plan for Victory.”

On Monday afternoon, when Gen. David H. Petraeus begins testifying about the latest plan for extracting troops — a slow process that could begin as early as December — no one will be talking about achieving victory, just stability. Nor will there be orchestrated cheers. Part of the strategy this time is to keep Mr. Bush well in the background until later in the week, when he is expected to address the country with a revised plan, picking a course that the White House hopes will end the unusually public disagreements among the president’s military advisers about how much more effort and blood to invest in the war.


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This story is totally believeable.


he White House said it has not yet seen the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker on the situation in Iraq, defending President Bush from criticism that he has not shared a preview of the report with top Republicans.

"Although the president has been briefed by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, we're not reviewing their testimony, so that's not something we can share," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq will testify before a joint House committee tomorrow and before two Senate committees on Tuesday. Their testimony precedes a written report from the White House, which will be released later in the week


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Bush knows exactly what this report will say. They can fool some of the sheep but I'm not buying it.

I watched the inquest, at best it was a yawn! There was nothing really new said. Everything has been used in the last couple of weeks leading up to the testamony.

Why waste time and resources? Nothing was new in the generals stuff.


WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, warned in stark terms against the kind of rapid pullback favored by the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, in a day of testimony on Monday that drove home the continuing inability of the Democrats to force a change in strategy in Iraq.

The general’s appearance in the cavernous Cannon Caucus room, the scene of past confrontations between Congress and the White House, crackled at various points with partisan tension, and his testimony was interrupted repeatedly by shouting protesters who were quickly escorted from the room.

“The situation in Iraq remains complex, difficult and sometimes downright frustrating,” General Petraeus said, as he began two days of highly anticipated appearances before Congress. “I also believe that it is possible to achieve our objectives in Iraq over time, although doing so will be neither quick nor easy.”


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I heard how much safer Iraq has become since the surge started. Is their some reason this is not reported?


It took some time and effort, but, with the aid of TPM readers, we've obtained two complete lists of monthly Iraqi civilian casualties from January 2006 forward. Taking these numbers on their own terms, they do not bear out the claims made by the Bush administration and U.S. military that the surge has reduced Iraqi civilian casualties. Comparing each month's death toll in 2007 to the death toll from that same month in 2006, the numbers show that surge has not made Iraq safer for the civilian population. By some measurements, Iraqis are in greater danger than a year ago.

It's a sign of how skewed the debate over the Iraq War is that these numbers are not readily available. Different Iraqi government agencies present different casualty figures. The U.S. military's own casualty total is said to rely on the Iraqis, but it's unclear which Iraqi agency it uses or what adjustments are made to the Iraqi figures. Even as today's testimony from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is considered a possible make-or-break moment for U.S. policy on Iraq, with the Bush Administration and the Pentagon touting the success of the surge in reducing civilian casualties, there is no general agreement on what civilian casualties have been or on what the most accurate methodology for tallying casualties is.


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What the tesatimony did not say.


WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's top two officials in Iraq answered questions from Congress for more than six hours on Monday, but their testimony may have been as important for what they didn't say as for what they did.

A chart displayed by Army Gen. David Petraeus that purported to show the decline in sectarian violence in Baghdad between December and August made no effort to show that the ethnic character of many of the neighborhoods had changed in that same period from majority Sunni Muslim or mixed to majority Shiite Muslim.


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Here is what was said in the opening statements.


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, on Monday appeared before a joint session of the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees to testify about the progress of the war in Iraq.
art.crocker.patraeus.afp.gi.jpg

Gen. David Petraeus, left, and Ryan Crocker prepare to testify Monday.

Following is a partial transcript of opening statements.


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And this is the pdf of the statements. Just in case you woulkd likie to see the real thing.


[url=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/20070911_POLICY/Petraeus_Testimony.pdf]LINK[/url

Damn! They beat me to it! I was gonna do something like this for my blog. The great minds thing.


Several report cards, assessing the progress of the war, were issued this summer.
A look at how they have assessed the security and political situation in Iraq.



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