As noted below, when The Washington Post reported on a draft last week of the Government Accountability Office report indicating pessimism about Iraq, the White House balked at the conclusions and the Pentagon reportedly pushed to get some of its conclusions changed.

Now that we have the final GAO report, it's clear that neither the White House's displeasure nor whatever pressure the Pentagon exerted on the GAO succeeded in accomplishing this goal.

Just as the draft report did, the final report concluded that the Iraqi government had met only three of 18 benchmarks for political success.

The Pentagon did apparently manage to swing a couple small changes -- in the "partially met" category. The original draft said that only two benchmarks -- the formation of governmental regions and the allocation and expenditure of $10 billion for reconstruction -- had been "partially met."

The final report, by contrast, says that four benchmarks have been "partially met" -- the two above, plus two other security benchmarks, the chief one being the provision of three trained and ready brigades to support Baghdad operations.

Bottom line: The Pentagon failed to get the report's main conclusions changed.