When I say some aspects of this report will be at ODDS with the mid September report it is because the statements from Gen. Petraeus are about progress in specific areas where we have applied more military power. Our Troops have done their job and done it well. The GAO Report acknowledges what General Petraeus reports is correct. However, that is like looking at the leaves on the tree. The GAO Report also looks beyond specific areas and considers the overall security situation and the progress on solving the military and political issues that are a MUST to arrive at a long tern end to the violence. That analysis shows that overall neither the violence nor the resolution of the political issues has shown progress.
But you see Col, it doesn't talk about progress, it talks about reached and fail benchmarks. There are no details as to what was the progress, it simply says they failed. This is what I mean:
Say Congress felt that of 5 pretend benchmark they need to get 90% to be considered reached, anything below 90% would be considered a failure. Now imagine this being the results, so far, of the GAO on these 5 pretend benchmarks:
#1 - 96%
#2 - 87%
#3 - 55%
#4 - 91%
#5 - 82%
Based on what Congress requested in this example, 3 out of 5 benchmarks failed. But did they really? Would you consider 87% and 82% a failure when there was only a 3 to 8% difference but was still more than 75% overall?
Now apply this same idea to the real GAO report. We won't know the real progress of these benchmarks, we will only know if they failed or were reached. That's like saying you got a B in math so you failed even though a B is good and you worked so hard but it's not an A.
