Iraq benchmarks

President George W. Bush outlined 18 benchmarks in 2007 that he said would be used to judge success in the Iraq War.

GAO report in Sept. 2007
In early September 2007, the Government Accountability Office released its report on progress in Iraq, which stated that only three of eighteen benchmarks were met. Republican congressional leaders responded by trying to discredit the results, and the Democratic leadership tried to use the report as evidence of the flaws in Bush's Iraq policy.

GOP House leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that the report was flawed, and that it "really amounts to asking someone to kick an 80-yard field goal and criticizing them when they came up 20 or 25 yards short." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stated that the Petraeus report, expected to be released on September 15, was the only Iraq progress report that mattered. Both Boehner and McConnell had voted for the bill ([H.R. 2206]) that mandated the GAO report be written.

The benchmarks
The benchmarks were most clearly established in H.R. 2206, a supplemental spending bill passed in May 2007.



The benchmarks, as laid out in 2206, are: