Richard WarnickWhere’s That Iraq NIE?
Analysts are putting the finishing touches on a new classified National Intelligence Estimate for Iraq, the first since July 2004. It was due last month, but has been delayed until after President Bush presents his “New Way Forward” plan. The existence of the new Iraq NIE was revealed last September by Rep. Jane Harmon (D-CA).
The new NIE will look at sectarian violence, the stability of Iraq’s government, economic trends and the state of the insurgency. It has been about six months in the making, which is an unusually long time given the urgency of the situation. Some in Congress wonder if the Bush administration has been trying to avoid acknowledging a credibility gap.
Paul Pillar, the CIA’s former Iraq analyst puts it this way: “Any objective analyst writing about Iraq is going to present a bad news picture. Because that’s the reality in Iraq.”
Last October, fifteen national security experts sent a letter to President Bush calling for the completion of the Iraq NIE:
We believe the American people and especially our troops deserve to know the full truth about the war in Iraq. Accordingly, we respectfully call upon you to complete the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and provide it to Congress as soon as possible. We also ask that you release a declassified version of it to the American public. The American people should not be learning important new facts about the war from leaks in newspapers or from revelations in newly-published books. We have a right to expect the truth – the whole truth – from our government. This is essential if we are to have a fully informed debate about how best to protect the interests of our country and how best to keep faith with our fighting men and women, who have been risking their lives in Iraq on a daily basis for more than three and one-half years.
Without the NIE, Congress does not have an up to date summary of the secret intelligence –and the White House will be able to claim that congressional leaders don’t have the same information the president has.
UPDATE: (01/22/07) Ken Silverstein writes in Harper’s that the Senate Armed Services Committee was disappointed last week when told that the intelligence community hadn’t been able to complete the NIE because of the many demands placed upon it by the Bush Administration to help prepare the new military strategy on Iraq.
“Apparently these ‘dog ate my homework’ alibis were badly received by both the Democrats and the Republicans on the Committee, and those in attendance now believe that senior intelligence officials are stalling because an NIE will be bleak enough to present a significant political liability”.
January 25th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
[...] No need to rush, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that Congresss asked for back in August may be almost here. For those who remember, the 90-page secret NIE on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs was prepared in just a couple of weeks in September 2002, with an unclassified version (PDF file) available almost immediately– just in time to lobby Congress to authorize a pre-emptive invasion. After Iraq was occupied, it was discovered that WMD programs and weapons stockpiles didn’t exist. [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 9:53 am
[...] Congress voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq based on an October 2002 NIE (PDF) that claimed Saddam Hussein’s government was developing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, which he planned to share with terrorists groups such as AlQaeda. The new estimate is the first NIE to focus on Iraq since 2004. Congress requested the NIE last July, but its release has been delayed, some say for political reasons. [...]