One Utah

The new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq was given to Congress today, with the title Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead (PDF file). It contradicts everything the Bush administration has been saying for months. The public version is of course an unclassified summary of the full document. An NIE represents the most authoritative assessment of the entire US Intelligence Community made up of 16 intelligence agencies.

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, and planning to share them with terrorists groups such as Al Qaeda. 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.

The “Key Judgments” in the NIE list the political problems facing Iraq, all insurmountable in the near term “given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene.” It’s worse than a mere civil war (emphasis in original):

The Intelligence Community judges that the term “civil war” does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term “civil war” accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethnosectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.

As Spencer Ackerman points out on Talking Points Memo, “If past NIEs are any prologue, what remains classified is much, much grimmer than what we see here. More likely than not, this is the most optimistic presentation of the NIE possible.”

UPDATE: IraqSlogger has more: “The declassified versions of the National Intelligence Council estimates are usually scrubbed of all the most provocative key judgements, and this one seems no different. It will take a few more weeks for a member of Congress to leak word of the most damning conclusions to a journalist or blogger (hint, hint).”

UPDATE: mcjoan on DailyKos: “Responsible people want to try to find a solution in Iraq, want to follow the Pottery Barn rule. But reading this assessment leads to one conclusion: we can’t fix it, not with a president who is unwilling to negotiate, unwilling to take advice, unwilling to consider changing course. It’s time to figure out how to get out with as little additional damage done as possible.”

This entry was posted Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 9:53 am and is filed under George W. Bush, Iraq, National Politics, This Blog, War. Both comments and pings are currently closed.