WASHINGTON — Two new government reports, one by the Pentagon, pointed Monday to encouraging security improvements in Iraq, but were decidedly pessimistic about prospects for political and economic progress and warned that costly military gains would remain fragile.
One report, by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that many political reconciliation efforts have stalled, that Iraq's security forces remain largely unable to operate without U.S. assistance and that its central government has not fulfilled commitments to spend its own money on reconstruction.
As a result, a new U.S. strategy for attaining military, political and economic goals is needed, the GAO said.
The Pentagon, while not agreeing on the need for a new strategy, acknowledged problems throughout Iraq. The quarterly report on progress also cited continued dissatisfaction among Iraqis over essential services such as water, electricity, sanitation and healthcare and said government officials in Baghdad "lack the ability" to advance needed rebuilding projects.
Both reports cite dramatic improvements in security, and officials say the number of attacks is continuing to plummet. On Monday, Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the No. 2 U.S. military commander in Iraq, said that the number of attacks had fallen from an average of 1,200 per week in June 2007 to 200 per week this June.
"Iraq is a much better place than it was a year ago across the board, politically, economically and from a security standpoint," Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday. "But we are not at the sustainable point yet, we are not at the irreversible point yet."
The GAO credited many security improvements to the U.S.-led initiative that pays former insurgents to guard their neighborhoods, a project the report called a "key component" of Washington's strategy.
But ominously, both the Pentagon and GAO reports note potential problems with the so-called Sons of Iraq program. Most Sunni Arab groups whose members have been brought into the program have yet to reconcile their differences with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, the GAO report notes. The Pentagon said the program faces the challenge of combating infiltration by extremist groups and concluded that the Iraqi government cannot currently manage the effort.
