White House report: progress on one goal

WASHINGTON — A new White House report on Iraq will show additional progress on one of 18 political and security goals — efforts to allow former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to rejoin the political process, a senior administration official said Thursday.

The latest conclusions, to be released today, largely track a comparable poor assessment in July. That report said the Iraqi government had made satisfactory gains toward eight benchmarks, unsatisfactory marks on eight and mixed results on two.

Congress required President Bush to submit the report to lawmakers. In it, the goal of enacting and implementing legislation on so-called "de-Baathification" was rated satisfactory instead of unsatisfactory, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Such a law hasn't passed, but the official pointed to the tentative Aug. 26 power-sharing agreement among leading Iraqi politicians.

The White House wouldn't confirm contents of the report and has tried to lower expectations about its findings.

"While everyone continues to work toward more political reconciliation," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Thursday, "we don't expect dramatic differences in the ... report compared to the one submitted less than two months ago."

The White House report is more positive than two other recent Iraq progress reports that harshly criticized lack of progress in Iraq.

The Sept. 6 report by the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, chaired by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, said Iraq's security forces will be unable to assume control of the country in the next 12 to 18 months without U.S. help and that the police force is rife with corruption and infiltrated by militia forces and should be disbanded.

The Government Accountability Office progress report on Iraq, released Sept. 4, said violence remains high, fewer Iraqi security forces are capable of acting independently and the Iraqi legislature has failed to reach major political agreements needed to curb violence.