John Kerry: The Escalation Didn't Work - blogging at HuffPo

[Adelante]

The escalation failed to do the one and only thing it was supposed to do. The entire Iraq policy of George W. Bush has failed since the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. No amount of parsing or spinning can change those simple facts: the escalation is and was the wrong answer.

I chaired a hearing on the GAO Report yesterday, the report that stated that Iraqi civilians overall aren't any safer, that the political benchmarks aren't being met in Iraq, that, in short, none of the rationales for the escalation in Iraq have come to pass. It unfolds with maddening, enraging regularity: the Administration claims goals for their policy, they gradually back off of those goals and substitute smaller, less easily measured goals, and then muddy the waters hopelessly on whether even those modest new goals have been met. Time and again we've been through this.

That's why the Congress set up some clear benchmarks to measure what's happening in Iraq. Mitch McConnell praised the "clarity" those benchmarks brought to the debate. "Just wait until September," they all said. "We put in these meaningful benchmarks, we can judge in September."

Well, how do they judge those benchmarks now? Only three of 18 have been met. Another four were "partially met," which sounds like a "Gentleman's C" if I've ever heard of one (and, for anyone who saw my college transcript, I have).

Judgment time is here, and the only verdict is the same one we had in January, the same one we've had for a long time in Iraq: the Bush policy is a tragic failure. It's a policy that not only isn't working; it can't work. A political solution in Iraq cannot come about without a clear deadline on where our troops will be pulling out. Only Iraqis can end this civil war, and they aren't - and won't be - making any progress with an open-ended, massive presence by our military in their country.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kerry/the-escalation-didnt-wor_b_63167.html