US Report: Iraq gov't hasn't met any benchmarks

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A draft report to Congress on the war will conclude that the US-backed government in Iraq has met none of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration's reckoning on what to do next, a US official said Monday. One likely result of the report will be a vastly accelerated debate among President George W. Bush's top aides on withdrawing troops and scaling back the US presence in Iraq. The "pivot point" for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush's so-called "surge" plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said. A draft version of the report, expected to be presented to Congress on Thursday or Friday, circulated among various government agencies in Washington on Monday.