David Petraeus Shows He Has Learned the Leadership Secrets of William Westmoreland

The Government Accountability Office weighs in:

Iraqi Spending to Rebuild Has Slowed, Report Says: Highly promising figures that the administration cited to demonstrate economic progress in Iraq last fall, when Congress was considering whether to continue financing the war, cannot be substantiated by official Iraqi budget records, the Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday.... [L]ast September the administration said Iraq had greatly accelerated such spending. By July 2007, the administration said, Iraq had spent some 24 percent of $10 billion set aside for reconstruction that year. As Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, prepared in September to report to Congress on the state of the war, the economic figures were a rare sign of progress within Iraq’s often dysfunctional government.

But in its report on Tuesday, the accountability office said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year. The reason for the difference, said Joseph A. Christoff, the G.A.O.’s director of international affairs and trade, was that few official Iraqi figures for 2007 were available when General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker went to Congress. So the administration, with the help of the Finance Ministry in Baghdad, appears to have relied on a combination of indicators, including real expenditures, ministries’ suggestions of projects they intended to carry out, and contracts that were still under negotiation, Mr. Christoff said. But actual spending does not seem to have lived up to those estimates for spending on reconstruction, a budget item sometimes called capital or investment expenditures, he added. “So it looked like an improvement, but it wasn’t an improvement,” he said....

[A]fter Iraq’s failure to spend its own money on reconstruction was first disclosed in late 2006, Iraqi and American officials repeatedly asserted that the problems would be much less severe the next year, as the new government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki found its way.... But the accountability office figures, which Mr. Christoff said were taken directly from Finance Ministry records, show that through August 2007 the Iraqi government had spent less than half the percentage of its investment budget that it had spent in the same period in 2006...

Comments

[Roger Albin]

“So it looked like an improvement, but it wasn’t an improvement,”

There's the epitaph for the surge.

[Neal]

Faith-based accounting, again.

The belief in something is sufficient to ensure the desired outcome. Debate is traitorous and defeatist.

[anne]

"I'm sure my memory is faulty because you've just called him a lying liar and there's no way you would go off on such a jag if you didn't have the goods in front of you. I know you'd never be that irresponsible."

The lie, of course, is in this rotten comment.

[MaryLou]

Did our general lie to us?

[Movie Guy]

Brad,

It's obvious that you do not know Dave Petraeus. Not at all.

[Fabius Maximus]

"Did the general lie to us?"

No, it appears not. The GAO report explicitly refers to the text of the Administration's report, that is the 14 September report by the President:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070914.html

There is no discussion of reconstruction funds in the 10 September reports by either General Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker.
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/Petraeus-Testimony20070910.pdf
http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/2007/91941.htm

I believe that a correction is needed to the title of this post or in its body.

[Nash]

I'd also like to point out, Brad (and by extension, Anne), that you are making a mistake that the NYT article you are citing does NOT make, although the article is extremely poorly written.

Here are the two sentences in the original that I think you are keying on, and if so, they do NOT support your conclusion that Petraeus lied about those numbers:

"As Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, prepared in September to report to Congress on the state of the war, the economic figures were a rare sign of progress within Iraq’s often dysfunctional government."

and

"The reason for the difference, said Joseph A. Christoff, the G.A.O.’s director of international affairs and trade, was that few official Iraqi figures for 2007 were available when General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker went to Congress."

This articles twice uses the timing of Petraeus' testimony before Congress as a marker for when the decisions were made to use those cooked up spending numbers. It does not, however, say those numbers showed up in anything Petraeus himself actually said.

You cannot see the distinction?

[Movie Guy]

Brad,

As you have taken a direct shot at General Dave Petraeus, why don't you quote him to back up your assertion?

It's just not that hard to do good research, Brad.

[Brad DeLong]

A great people don't seem to have grasped the leadership secrets of William Westmoreland, chief among which is: let others tell lies about the political situation for you.

This has run into diminishing returns...

[Nash]

So the point of your "heh indeed" post was that Petraeus was like the Westmoreland who directed his underlings to provide bogus casualty numbers and not like the Westmoreland who sometimes provided those false numbers himself (because it's been documented that he did both). You meant to brand Petraeus with the former and not the latter; it should be clear to a "great people" from your Reynolds-esque post that you weren't calling him a liar, but rather a manipulator of liars. And that clears it up for me.

Did the returns diminish merely because someone disagreed with you, Brad? It rather seems so.