The debate over timetables for Iraq is over. Now the debate over benchmarks begins.

USA Today has an editorial this morning supporting benchmarks “with consequences for failure to meet them.”

They gave me space for an op-ed making the opposing argument which boils down to this: The last thing Gen. David Petraeus needs: 535 micromanagers thousands of miles away on Capitol Hill. Ditto for our new ambassador, Ryan Crocker. Their jobs are tough enough.

It will be necessary for Petraeus and Croker (and Bush and Gates and Rice) to demonstrate persuasively to the American public that they are making progress (assuming they do). But benchmarks linked to inflexible or arbitrary deadlines based on political imperatives in Washington rather than realities in Iraq would signal our enemies how best to twist the United States into a knot from which retreat and defeat would provide the only escape.