The deal with the Iraqi Economy

Via Atrios, here's the New York Times:

As Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, prepared in September to report to Congress on the state of the war, the economic figures were a rare sign of progress within Iraq’s often dysfunctional government.

But in its report on Tuesday, the accountability office said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year.

To which the Marcy Wheeler adds:

What the NYT doesn't say, though, is that the GAO itself also reported on how much money Iraq had spent, in its report issued just before Petraeus' dog and pony show. In fact, the benchmark of whether Iraq was spending its money as quickly it was supposed to was one of the ones on which the GAO and the Administration disagreed. Whereas the GAO declared that Iraq had "partially met" its goal to spend $10 billion on reconstruction, the Administration declared Iraq's progress "satisfactory." So the GAO's report is really the GAO providing evidence that its more pessimistic measures were correct.

Indeed. It also should be noted that the Iraqi economy--the "rare sign of progress"--wasn't actually a sign of anything like progress. That was all a bunch of bullshit too.