The White House is pushing back on this story in yesterday's Washington Post by Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks on the leaked General Accounting Office (GAO) report which apparently shows little progress in Iraq. Here's the lede:

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The clear implication of the piece is that the administration exaggerated and/or misled the public when it published its own report in mid-July declaring the Iraqis were making "satisfactory progress" in 8 out of the 18 Congressionally mandated benchmarks.

But a Senior Administration Official I spoke with yesterday vigorously disputed that characterization, saying that the GAO is applying a different up-or-down only standard, making it "an apples to oranges comparison."

Indeed, the language in the statute does set out a different standard, requiring the President to declare, as he did on July 15, "in his judgment, whether satisfactory progress toward meeting these benchmarks is, or is not, being achieved," while the Comptroller General is required to provide an assessment on September 1 of "whether or not each such benchmark has been met."

As an example of the discrepancy between the two standards, the administration official I spoke with pointed to the first benchmark on the list, which is "forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review."

There are three components to this benchmark: 1) assembling the committee, 2) setting up the process by which the review will take place, and 3) conducting the review, which means holding a national referendum.

As of right now, the Iraqis have completed the first two steps. By the administration's standard, that represented "satisfactory progress." But because step three, the national referendum, has not yet taken place, it is considered an unmet benchmark by the GAO's up-or-down standard.

Aside from the administration wanting to clarify the distinctions between the two standards and to knock down the impression left by the Washington Post that it was being either dishonest or manipulative, the GAO report helps illuminate just how difficult it is to apply one-dimensional benchmarks to an enormously complex, fluid, and three-dimensional situation like the one we face in Iraq.