Senator wants sections of GAO report on Iraq declassified

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., will urge the Bush administration Friday to declassify several sections of a Government Accountability Office assessment of the Iraqi government's performance that were not included in a public version of the report released this week.

During a hearing on the report Friday morning, Levin said he plans to send Defense Secretary Robert Gates an urgent request Friday asking him to reconsider the rationale behind classifying some of the material. In its report, GAO reviewed legislative, security and economic progress in Iraq, concluding that the nascent government has met or partially met seven of 18 benchmarks.

Specifically, Levin wants to make public details in GAO's classified assessment of the levels of sectarian violence in Iraq. In its public report, GAO said it was impossible to measure whether sectarian violence in particular had decreased because it is often difficult to conclude the intent behind an attack.

The auditors did find the total number of attacks targeting coalition forces began to decline in June, after an upward swing between March and May. But daily attacks in July still were roughly equal to the number of attacks in February, the start of the military's troop surge campaign in Iraq. The report states that the classified version of the assessment "provides further information on trends associated with violence in Iraq."

David Walker, U.S. comptroller general and GAO chief, said Friday he expects a report to be released by the White House next week to show a "much more dramatic decline" in the levels of sectarian violence than what GAO deduced from its investigation.

Indeed, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, on Friday sent a letter to military personnel touting "considerably reduced levels" of sectarian violence compared to eight months ago. "The overall trajectory has been encouraging, especially when compared to the situation at the height of the sectarian violence in late 2006 and early 2007," Petraeus wrote.

During a break in the hearing, Walker acknowledged to reporters that the Bush administration could have made some of the report's classified material available to the public: "I think certain information in this report arguably should not have been classified because there are some examples of where there is information that has been classified that have been in public speeches that have been given by various officials in the Pentagon previously."

Specifically, Walker questioned the Bush administration's decision to classify some information on the number of Iraqi forces that can operate independently. Whether to declassify information in the GAO report on the levels of sectarian violence "depends on how much emphasis the administration wants to put on that" when it sends its Iraq progress report to Capitol Hill next week, Walker said. "If they want to place great emphasis on that, then I think there's a need for transparency," he added.