Bush Tries Moving the Goalposts

When President Bush announced in January that he was sending more troops to Iraq, he declared that the Iraqis needed to exploit the surge by following through on several promises.

"America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced," Bush said.

What would happen if the Iraqis failed? Aides at the time insisted that there would be consequences, without saying what or when. The president's own warning was hardly ominous: "If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people," he said -- long after that had already happened.

But at least the new policy held out some vague hope for accountability. Congress has since made the benchmarks more concrete, setting some deadlines if not for achieving the goals then at least for some progress reports from the president.

Now one of those deadlines is approaching, yet reality in Iraq continues as ever to defy Bush's expectations. So the question arises: What to do?

Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks write in Sunday's Washington Post: "The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter. As they prepare an interim report due next week, officials are marshaling alternative evidence of progress to persuade Congress to continue supporting the war."

In other words, it's time to move the goalposts. Or, carrying the analogy further, to replace them with toothpicks.

As DeYoung and Ricks write, Bush had insisted that more troops "would enable the Iraqis to proceed this year with provincial elections and pass a raft of power-sharing legislation. In addition, he said, the government of President Nouri al-Maliki planned to 'take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November.'

"Congress expanded on Bush's benchmarks, writing 18 goals into law as part of the war-funding measure it passed in the spring.

"In addition to the elections, legislation and security measures Bush outlined in January, Congress added demands that the Iraqi government complete a revision of its constitution and enact a law on de-Baathification and additional laws on militia disarmament, regional boundaries and other issues."

Instead, "the administration will report that Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province are turning against the group al-Qaeda in Iraq in growing numbers; that sectarian killings were down in June; and that Iraqi political leaders managed last month to agree on a unified response to the bombing of a major religious shrine, officials said. . . .

"But anything short of progress on the original benchmarks is unlikely to appease the growing ranks of disaffected Republican lawmakers who are urging Bush to develop a new strategy."