New York Times Death Spiral Watch

From Ilya Goldenberg:

democracyarsenal.org: Five Out of Eleven: Oh, I love it when Mike O'Hanlon is in the NY Times:

The most intriguing area of late is the sphere of politics [in Iraq]. To track progress, we have established "Brookings benchmarks" -- a set of goals on the political front similar to the broader benchmarks set for Baghdad by Congress last year. Our 11 benchmarks include establishing provincial election laws, reaching an oil-revenue sharing accord, enacting pension and amnesty laws, passing annual federal budgets, hiring Sunni volunteers into the security forces, holding a fair referendum on the disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk, and purging extremists from government ministries and security forces.

At the moment, we give the Iraqis a score of 5 out of 11 (our system allows a score of 0, 0.5, or 1 for each category, and is dynamic, meaning we can subtract points for backsliding). It is far too soon to predict that Iraq is headed for stability or sectarian reconciliation. But it is also clear that those who assert that its politics are totally broken have not kept up with the news.

Here's the best thing about this. There is no way to refute it because his scoring isn't up anywhere.... So, five out of eleven it is because that's what Mike O'Hanlon tells me it is.

Sure enough:

The New York Times says that there is an ongoing "Brookings benchmarks" set of indicators on Iraqi political progress that simply... does not exist.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Comments

[Richard Cownie]

.. and I'll bet that when we do find the envelope on the back of which
these benchmarks are scrawled, we'll find that the "5 out of 11" arises
mostly by saying that on almost every benchmark, the situation is
neither as bad as it possibly could be (score=0), nor as good as it
possibly could be (score=1), and thus it gets 0.5. Because god forbid
that we try to measure something like "progress in reconciling different
sectarian groups" with finer resolution than 3 values. After all, on
such a scale we can have Rwanda=0, Sweden=1, and then USA=Canada=Belgium=
France=Iraq=SouthAfrica=Kosovo=0.5. If it isn't genocide - or if it is
genocide right now, but we think it might be moving towards not-genocide -
then it scores at least 0.5.

Maybe we could allow the US public to vote on whether military expenditure
in Iraq should be $12B/month, $6B/month, or 0 ?

[Benjamin]

"These benchmarks go to eleven!"

[Benjamin]

"These benchmarks go to eleven!"

[Patrick]

I ran a search for the same thing without the parenthesis because I thought that might improve the chances of a positive result. It didn't. I got a bunch of results, but nothing I could identify as a set of eleven benchmarks for Iraq.

[Lord]

My simple one test rule. If the surge is working we should be able to withdraw. If we can't withdraw, it's not working.

[Maniakes]

Search for "site:brookings.edu iraq political benchmarks" (without quotes)

This is the third result:
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0127_iraq_ohanlon.aspx

There are 11 bullet points listed, each with a letter grade.

["This list of criteria suggests passing grades on about a half-dozen and unclear results on two of the others. Three of them are static and fundamentally worrisome." That would be a score of 8, not a score of 5.]

[Carlos]

Google has been updated ;)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=iceweasel-a&rls=org.debian%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&q=site%3Abrookings.edu+%22brookings+benchmarks%22&btnG=Search

[Maniakes]

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0309_iraq_ohanlon.aspx

"On a scale of 0 to 1 for each category, we accord a 1 for the pensions law, and for the 2008 budget.

"We then estimate half points for six categories: passing of the reformed de-Baathification law (which may or may not work out as well as intended in the actual implementation), purging extremists from the government (which is going fairly well but largely at U.S. insistence and cajoling), hiring Sons of Iraq into the security forces (again, going well, but there is some interest from the Shia-led government in limiting the number of Sons of Iraq who can join security forces as opposed to gaining other types of government jobs), passing of the amnesty law (again, the law is promising, but implementation is key), central government sharing of money with the provinces (far better than before, but still needing to progress further), and passing of the provincial powers act (recently passed, but also recently vetoed, leaving it in some limbo).

"We accord the Iraqis 0 for resolving Kirkuk, for creating a permanent hydrocarbons law, and for passing a provincial election law."

Those are the same benchmarks from the letter grade article, and if B+ or better is full credit, C- through B is half credit, and everything else is no credit, it looks like the same rankings as well.

[La Deluge]

O'Hanlon's Brookings bio gives this work some prominence, any one have any thoughts about the identity of any junior authors of the Iraq Index.

"Michael O’Hanlon specializes in U.S. national security policy. He is senior author of the Iraq Index."

http://www.brookings.edu/experts/ohanlonm.aspx

[tedb]

Evidently, grade inflation is not limited to universities.