“We’re winning the War on Terror.”

Since 1115.org isn’t sufficiently swank enough to swing a subscription to LexisNexis, we can only speculate as to how many times the above phrase has been used by our politicians and the so-called experts of the punditry. But considering that almost every official mention of the War on Terrorâ„¢ seems to need an obligatory assertion of how we are winning, it’s safe to say that our victory and progress has been trumpeted hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

While it’s true that we’ve had our differences with many of the administration’s decisions and priorities up to this point, we can all be in agreement that a world free of terrorism would be a fantastic thing. But like almost everything else in the WOT so far, there’s the shiny slogan and then there’s the mess of inconvenient questions stuffed underneath. One of these inconveniences is something so obvious that it almost hides in plain sight—how, exactly, do we know that we’re winning the war in the first place?

The answer to this question, as the Congressional Research Service found out, is “we have no way of really knowing.”

“Although four years have gone by since September 11, government agencies have still not agreed on criteria to measure progress against terrorism, even though billions of dollars have been spent,” said Raphael Perl, author of the internal report by the Congressional Research Service.

“The risk is that without these criteria, we just take action and we measure progress retrospectively against what we’ve done. And of course since we’ve done some stuff, we’ve made progress,” he told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

Statistics often cited by U.S. officials — such as the death or capture of more than two-thirds of top al Qaeda leaders and the seizure of over $200 million in terrorist funds — do not show how much damage has actually been inflicted on militant groups, the report said.

So there you have it. Yes, we’re winning the War on Terror, but only because we’ve said it enough times to somehow mold words into reality. Every other yardstick is just random numbers tossed about with no context. Terrorists killed! Top al Qaeda leaders captured! Insurgents on the run! Freedom on the march! Of course we’re winning! The nice thing about having no actual definitions of success or failure is that you can continually claim the former because the latter never happens.

No matter where on the political spectrum you may fall, can it be argued that, for the war to be successful, it has to have some way to measure its progress? Or is the American public better served by just winging it?

When you boil it down, it all comes back to the dreaded “a” word…accountability. Throughout the course of the WOT (and associated conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq), there have been more than a few serious lapses in oversight—the border security systems that sat unused in warehouses, the billions of dollars unaccounted for in Baghdad, the continuing saga of Halliburton’s overcharging, and the list stretches on and on. So in that context, the following story about contractors working for the Defense Department shouldn’t be much of a surprise:

In a new report, the Department of Defense inspector general reviewed 23 service contracts worth $670 million awarded in 2003 to determine whether the vendor performance and costs were monitored and scrutinized. The results were not good.

“DOD may be accepting sub-standard performance by contractors, may be paying for services and items not received, and may be awarding contracts to vendors with a history of sub-standard performance,” said the October report.

In 12 of 23 contracts, no contract official was appointed to monitor vendor performance and accounting controls. Twenty of the 23 did not have a contract surveillance plan or appoint someone specifically to oversee contract performance. In 10 cases, no one documented contractor performance for use in future contract award decisions when prior performance may be a consideration.

It’s no secret that the people in power are supporters of privatizing many government services and programs, but is there any logic in having private contractors work in areas near or vital to our national security, and then fail to make sure they are doing their jobs? None at all. But for a government that likes to think of itself as both fiscally responsible and tough on terror, it’s amazing how little it cares about actually confronting either.