I don't really know enough about Iraq to adjudicate a debate between Spencer Ackerman and Michael O'Hanlon. But it certainly seems to me that the New York Times shouldn't simply be reprinting O'Hanlon's "benchmarks" without giving readers some way to evaluate whether they're worth listening to. O'Hanlon, after all, is anything but an objective source. He's a media beast who's currently fighting a war over his reputation, a war started when the army gave him a guided, planned tour demonstrating their "progress" in Iraq, and he wrote a puff piece on it. Now he desperately needs to advance a narrative of progress if he's not going to be laughed out of every foreign policy room forevermore. If the Times wants a set of Iraq benchmarks, they should convene a panel of independent experts, or develop one themselves. Letting O'Hanlon grade the conflict is rather like letting Scott Templeton fact check his own work. Update: Ilan Goldenberg notes that O'Hanlon's methodology is...nonexistent. "There is no way to refute it because his scoring isn’t up anywhere. It’s not in the Iraq Index and the closest thing he has is an A, B, C grading system from a month and a half ago. So, five out of eleven it is because that’s what Mike O’Hanlon tells me it is." Thanks New York Times!
