As a requirement for the Iraq war spending bill approved in May, President Bush will address Congress on Saturday to update the previously agreed-upon benchmarks that determine whether the course of action taken these past few months has been effective.

On Tuesday of last week, according to CNN, the Government Accountability Office reported that of the 18 benchmarks set forth by Congress, only three have been fully met, while one has been partially met. The benchmarks, which were created alongside the $120 billion bill, effectively measure the rate of success being attained in Iraq and provide a means of knowing exactly where the U.S. stands in the war in Iraq.

Items on the agenda that have been fully met include ensuring the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi Legislature are protected, establishing joint security stations in Baghdad neighborhoods and setting up committees to support the Baghdad security plan. Officials emphasize, however, that many of the benchmarks involve multipart questions, and some of those have been partially answered.

Richard Mansbach, professor of political science, said the entire idea behind funding and increasing the amount of troops was doomed from the beginning.

“The issues are fundamentally political, not military,” he said. “It’s hard to see what the progress would be.”

Although it may seem from these statistics the war is not attaining any of its set priorities, there is at least one bright spot in this dreary report. According to statistics provided by a McClatchy news report, over the past three months the number of casualties of American troops has declined, leaving analysts and officials alike scratching their heads at this surprising fact. Since the inception of 280,000 more troops in May 2007, American troop casualties have dropped from 123 to 81, about two-thirds. Both sides, however, are divided as to why this is.

Tyler Platt, vice president of ISU Democrats and sophomore in chemical engineering, said these statistics were a “sobering wake-up call” and feels that it effectively outlines that “the war effort is going largely unmet.” Platt said the smartest thing to do would be to pull out the soldiers in Iraq.

“I would hope that they [citizens] would demand some accountability and a rethinking of what we are doing there [in Iraq],” he said. “We want to limit the amount of American soldiers that are in harm’s way, especially if having more troops is not helping the effort.”

Don McDowell, consultant with ISU College Republicans and senior in political science, said these unmet benchmarks show “a lot of military success” but did not think “progress is as widespread as it should be.”

“If it is tamed more militarily as it should [be], we will see progress politically,” McDowell said.

Mansbach said the current policy in Iraq is not working.

“As for retaining the numbers of troops in Iraq that are there today, it’s an absolute disaster policy; it’s catastrophic,” he said.