Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee Subject: GAO's Iraqi Government Assessment

Statement

HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: GAO'S IRAQI GOVERNMENT ASSESSMENT
CHAIRED BY: REP. IKE SKELTON (D-MO)
WITNESS: DAVID WALKER, COMPTROLLER GENERAL, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

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REP. MAC THORNBERRY (R-TX): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Walker, I appreciate your skill in dealing with the situation where you knew whatever ya'll came out and said was going to be used as political fodder in a very intense political debate. You knew you were going to be pushed and stretched into all sorts of policy areas beyond the face of the document, and I appreciate your ability to try to stick with the objective facts you were asked to measure.

I have been a strong advocate of using objective metrics to help as a tool in measuring progress, particularly in areas of national security. One of the things I've realized in trying to do that on the Intelligence Committee is, it's incredibly hard work to try to pick your metric so that it's useful through the passage of time, so that it's something that can be measured and helps point you in a certain direction.

As I look through these 18 metrics that you were handed -- I realize the origin of them -- but you would not argue that all are of equal weight, for example, in trying to determine future policy of the United States or the government of Iraq.

MR. WALKER: I would agree. They're not all of equal weight. We didn't try to weight them.

REP. THORNBERRY: And it occurs to me this discussion, which has been the subject of great controversy over whether sectarian violence is going down, is in large measure a function of a difficulty in measuring it. Is -- would -- not whether it is or is not going down, but how do you know?

MR. WALKER: That's correct.

REP. THORNBERRY: And so your position is that you can't know for sure in a way that is measurable -- doesn't mean it's not happening; doesn't mean it is happening -- but you can't measure it, and therefore you have to give the results that you give.

MR. WALKER: Right. And I'm not sure that those that are keeping the statistics can reliably measure it either.

REP. THORNBERRY: Yeah. I think that's an important point for us all to discuss: How do you measure whatever it is you're talking about, and how do you assign importance to the different things that you're talking about?

I'm struck by that, too, when you look at the legislative area. That hits a little close to home for us. You've been a tremendous advocate, for example, of this Congress taking action to put Social Security on a more stable financial footing. If you were to give us a grade about how well we've done on that, it would be "not met," right?

MR. WALKER: It would be "failure." (Laughs.)

REP. THORNBERRY: Yeah. (Laughter.) And using -- just as a way of example, even if a bill had passed out of the House and a bill had passed out of the Senate, while you're waiting on a conference committee, the administration report would show progress but your report would show "not met."

MR. WALKER: I don't know. We might give you "partially met" on that. (Laughs.)

REP. THORNBERRY: All right. Well, I hope it happens. I'm not holding my breath. But the point is, is I understand -- let's see, eight of the 18 benchmarks are waiting on the Iraqi legislature to pass a bill, and one of those has been met so far. And you described already -- one of -- there's another that you describe as partially met because they passed the bill but it hadn't taken effect yet.

Is that true?

MR. WALKER: That's correct. There are eight benchmarks; one they've met, one they've partially met, six have not been met in the legislative area.

REP. THORNBERRY: Well, I -- I appreciate the work you all have done. I would hate for somebody to judge us by this standard and number of areas, because I'm not sure that this Congress would come out as well as a lot of us would hope. But I I also look forward to continuing to work with your organization in looking for objective measures to see whether things are getting better that stand the test of time. It's a huge job. I'm just beginning to appreciate that difficulty, but I think your folks can help us do that, and I appreciate it.

MR. WALKER: Somehow I doubt that Congress is going to ask us to measure its own effectiveness in some of these areas, but -- but, you know, who knows? (Chuckles.)

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