ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)<br /> <br />Brett McGurk, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq told lawmakers on Wednesday the new Iraqi government was making progress in countering Islamic State militants.<br /> <br />"We're looking to see the reforms this new government is making -- without an Iraqi commitment long term, we probably won't succeed," McGurk said, adding over the past 100 days Iraq "is taking steps that we wanted to have taken."<br /> <br />Several lawmakers expressed frustration and criticism over alleged benchmarks showing progress.<br /> <br />"I'm fixated on what constitutes progress? We've used metrics in the past about how many Iraqi troops we trained. Well how did that work out for us? They melted away and now we have ISIS (Islamic State) as one of the best funded best equipped terrorist organizations on the planet thanks to U.S. assistance," Congressman Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, told McGurk.<br /> <br />Ambassador McGurk also spoke of the recent agreement
