Well, it’s not as bad as last week’s leaked version, but the Government Accountability Office’s Iraq progress report is still pretty grim. According to the GAO’s findings, the current Iraqi government has failed to meet 11 out of 18 benchmarks set last May by U.S. officials.

“Violence remains high, the number of Iraqi security forces capable of conducting independent operations has declined, and militias are not disarmed,” the GAO, the investigating arm of Congress, said.

Despite the deployment of 30,000 extra U.S. troops to Iraq, raising force levels to 160,000, the number of attacks on civilians remained substantially unchanged from February to July 2007, the report said.

In Baghdad, the head of day-to-day U.S. military operations said the next three to four months would be vital to determining whether violence could be cut further and security maintained with fewer American troops.

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