06/09/2013 00:00
TW
0

by RAY FLEMING
IN just over one week General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, will deliver his anxiously awaited progress report to the US Congress. This report will deal specifically with the results of the “surge” in the US military presence in the past few months and, if they have been promising, whether they are sufficiently so to make the prospect of a more general improvement in Iraq in 2008 realistic.

As a military man General Petraeus will not want to have to admit that the surge's results have been modest but equally he will avoid risking unsubstantiated optimism that could have serious political repercussions at home and in the Middle East.

However positively the General may report on the military situation, it is already clear that the Iraq government has fallen down badly on benchmarks for political and economic progress set by the US Congress at the time that the surge was authorised; a report published in Washington yesterday said that only 3 out of 18 benchmark objectives have been met by the Maliki governrment. Although Mr Bush has set great store by the Petraeus report it apparently will not be the only military assessment to be made public in September. The Pentagon said earlier this week that other commanders will make their views known and that no “unified Pentagon” position will be presented to Congress. Against this background Iraq's foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari yesterday predicted “a bloodbath” if the United States and Britain withdraw prematurely.