Snowe Assesses GAO Report As “Confirmation of the Iraqi Government’s Failure”
Report Originally Required in Snowe-Bayh Legislation Finds Little Progress on 18 Benchmarks
September 12, 2007
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As a co-author of legislation requiring an assessment by the Government Accountability Office on whether the Iraqi government has achieved 18 critical and essential political benchmarks, U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) today assessed the GAO’s findings as “a A distressing confirmation that Iraqi leadership lacks either the political will or the ability to achieve national reconciliation in spite of the sacrifices made by American soldiers, whose professionalism and devotion to duty is an inspiration to us all.” The GAO report is significant as it is an independent evaluation of progress toward fulfillment of the true purpose of the surge – which was to provide the Iraqi government the opportunity to institute key benchmarks critical to unifying the nation.
“This report confirms some of our worst fears,” said Senator Snowe. “The report is striking in its definitiveness that the Iraqi government has made no progress on 11 of the most vital benchmarks. Most importantly, the report assessed that only one of the political benchmarks -- the protection of the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature -- had been met, while forming a constitutional review committee, holding provincial elections, enacting and implementing de-Ba’athification reform or an oil revenue sharing law continue to languish. There’s been too little progress by the Iraqi government and as I have stated many times since January when the President’s surge policy was announced,
America
’s patience is not infinite. If the surge was designed to give the Iraqi government breathing room to finally make substantial strides for the sake of the country’s destiny, the GAO conclusions should give all of serious pause as to our course of action going forward.”
In May, Senator Snowe and Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) introduced the first legislation requiring that the GAO conduct a thorough and independent review on whether the Iraqi government has made progress toward 18 congressionally mandated political benchmarks. The Snowe-Bayh language was added to the FY ’08 Iraq War Supplemental by Sen. John Warner (R-Virginia).
The 15-person GAO international affairs team includes an array of specialists, lawyers, economists, foreign policy experts and statisticians who have been working on Iraq since June 2003 and work on a day-to-day basis with the departments of State and Defense. The report released today is one of more than 100 assessments on a variety of issues pertaining to
Iraq
that the independent GAO has completed since May 2003.
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