At first glance, a legitimate criticism of the GAO report:

However, two senior military sources told the newspaper the report was flawed.

"They use the end of July as the data and evidentiary cutoff and therefore are not taking into account any gains in any of the benchmarks that may have become more clear throughout August," one official said.

On closer examination, it turns out that the military simply didn't provide the GAO with the information. As Comptroller General David Walker explained:

Walker said the GAO consulted with the military until Thursday. "We asked for, but did not receive, the information through the end of August," he said. "But we obtained their views for where the situation was . . . as of August 30th."

The GAO report on political reconciliation in Iraq reached dismal conclusions -- there has been little progress, and none of it is sustainable. In Senator McConnell's world, that means the GAO has to be discredited. Here's what he said yesterday:

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MINORITY LEADER: There are a number of reports, but all reports are not equal. The report that is written into law are the reports by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. Those reports will be before the Congress next week.

Of course, the GAO report is also "written into law," mandated by the same law that demanded the White House report, as Media Matters points out.

Boy, Senator McConnell really likes his outdated arguments about Iraq. First, he revived "flypaper", about three years after everyone else realized it was ridiculous. Now he's harping about the "Korea model" as a projection for our future in Iraq. Hasn't he heard that President Bush moved on to the "Vietnam model?" The "Korea model" was introduced a few months ago, met gales of laughter, and was quickly dropped by the Republicans. Apparently Senator McConnell didn't get the memo.

Senator McConnell revived the analogy yesterday to 150 people at a luncheon in Berea. 60 people protested outside, and Jim Pence caught them on video. There doesn't appear to be a transcript of the Senator's remarks, but reporter Bill Robinson described them in the Richmond Register:

Avoiding the issue of a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops, which even some his fellow Republican senators have begun to support, McConnell compared his Middle East proposal to the stationing of U.S. troops in South Korea after an armistice ended the Korean conflict in 1953.

Because of the U.S. troops there, South Korea has become a stable country with a democratic government and a capitalist economy, McConnell said.

This is not a new argument. The AP reported on May 30th:

President Bush envisions a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.

The analogy didn't make any sense, but it revealed the administration's belief that we should have troops in Iraq for generations. On the analogy's inaptness, Fred Kaplan explained in Slate:

To sum up, we intervened in South Korea as a response to an invasion and as part of a broad strategy to contain Communist aggression. We intervened in Iraq as the instigator of an invasion and as part of a broad strategy to expand unilateral American power. We remained in South Korea to protect a solid (if, for many years, authoritarian) government from another border incursion. We are remaining in Iraq to bolster a flimsy government and stave off a violent social implosion.

In other words, in no meaningful way are these two wars, or these two countries, remotely similar. In no way does one experience, or set of lessons, shed light on the other. In Iraq, no border divides friend from foe; no clear concept defines who is friend and foe. To say that Iraq might follow "a Korean model"—if the word model means anything—is absurd.

Retired Lt. Gen. Don Kerrick said that "it's a gross over-simplification to reassure people that we have a longer-term plan...Clearly there was no insurgency or terrorism going on in South Korea...There was a clear line between North and South Korea; the United States was really there as a trip-wire to protect South Korea. It's completely different in Iraq. As we know there is no line. The analogy just doesn't cut in this set of circumstances."

Reitred Brig. Gen. John Jones called the analogy "'blatant PR' that can't be taken seriously. 'It's an umbrella for staying the course.'"

Surge-supporter Michael O'Hanlon thought the analogy would increase anti-American sentiment in Iraq:

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at Brookings Institution, said Snow's comparison of Iraq and South Korea would hurt efforts to convince Iraqis and others that the United States does not plan an indefinite military stay.

"In trying to convey resolve, he conveys the presumption that we're going to be there for a long time," O'Hanlon said. "It's unhelpful to handling the politics of our presence in Iraq."

Even Mitt Romney disagreed:

"Our objective would not be a Korea-type setting with 25-50,000 troops on a near permanent basis remaining in bases in Iraq," the former Massachusetts governor told the Associated Press.

"I think we would hope to turn Iraq security over to their own military and their own security forces, and if presence in the region is important for us than we have other options that are nearby," Romney said in a wide-ranging, hourlong interview with AP reporters and editors.

At minimum, Kentucky deserves a Senator that keeps up to date with his party's propaganda.

On Monday, Senator McConnell praised a toothless statement from Prime Minister Maliki:

“I welcome the news that Iraqi leaders have taken steps to reach consensus on issues critical to the stability and future governance of Iraq. In the past few weeks we’ve heard reports from Iraq that our brave troops are succeeding in providing the security that General Petraeus’ mission was designed to provide. Iraqi leaders must take this opportunity to make tough decisions like the ones they made yesterday.”

One would have been either desperate and dishonest or hopelessly naive to think that the "news" praised by McConnell was meaningful. As expected, it has turned out to be theater arranged by Maliki to influence the American political debate:

So once again, even if the politicians were acting in good faith, it's not at all clear that they speak for the armed men who can veto any high-level compromise. The agreement may give Ambassador Crocker some rare and much-needed good news to highlight when he delivers his surge status report to Congress next month. But, as a senior American military official said earlier this month, "it is going to require some sustained effort and inspired political leadership to overcome the hostility and hate and mistrust that's grown up around the political structure here in Iraq."

As Ilan Goldenberg noted on Tuesday, there's a pattern here. We get a detail-free, jubilant announcement of progress on political reconciliation from Maliki, followed by a brief cascade of celebratory onanism in the conservative media. Then the details emerge, the agreement is more death rattle than cause for cigars, and it dies in the Iraqi parliament, with the American press absent at the wake. It happened with a purported compromise on an oil law in July, just before President Bush was required to submit a report on progress on political benchmarks, and it's happening again. And our senior Senator is happy to exploit it.

The Pentagon has confirmed that weapons we bought and distributed to Iraqi police forces have been recovered from criminals in Turkey. Reading between the lines, it appears that weapons we've provided to Kurdish forces in Iraq have found their way to Kurdish terrorists operating against our ally, Turkey. Christ, this is a mess.