By Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post
A growing number of career professionals within national
security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much
worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is
being expressed in public by top Bush administration
officials, according to former and current government
officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence
officials at the CIA and the departments of State and
Defense.
While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public
appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and
study it at the CIA and the State Department and within the
Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more
widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials
say.
People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because
it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and
deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who
maintains contact with CIA officials. "There's no obvious
way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed
state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of
weak governments."
"Things are definitely not improving," said one U.S.
government official who reads the intelligence analyses on
Iraq.
"It is getting worse," agreed an Army staff officer who
served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad
through e-mail. "It just seems there is a lot of pessimism
flowing out of theater now. There are things going on that
are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting
attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year
ago."
This weekend, in a rare departure from the positive
talking points used by administration spokesmen, Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that the insurgency is
strengthening and that anti-Americanism in the Middle East
is increasing. "Yes, it's getting worse," he said of the
insurgency on ABC's "This Week." At the same time, the U.S.
commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, told
NBC's "Meet the Press" that "we will fight our way through
the elections." Abizaid said he believes Iraq is still
winnable once a new political order and the Iraqi security
force is in place.
Powell's admission and Abizaid's sobering warning came
days after the public disclosure of a National Intelligence
Council (NIC) assessment, completed in July, that gave a
dramatically different outlook than the administration's and
represented a consensus at the CIA and the State and Defense
departments.
In the best-case scenario, the NIC said, Iraq could be
expected to achieve a "tenuous stability" over the next 18
months. In the worst case, it could dissolve into civil war.
The July assessment was similar to one produced before
the war and another in late 2003 that also were more
pessimistic in tone than the administration's portrayal of
the resistance to the U.S. occupation, according to senior
administration officials. "All say they expect things to get
worse," one former official said.
One official involved in evaluating the July document
said the NIC, which advises the director of central
intelligence, decided not to include a more rosy scenario
"because it looked so unreal."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, and other White
House spokesmen, called the intelligence assessment the work
of "pessimists and naysayers" after its outlines were
disclosed by the New York Times.
President Bush called the assessment a guess, which drew
the consternation of many intelligence officials. "The CIA
laid out several scenarios," Bush said on Sept. 21. "It said
that life could by lousy. Life could be okay. Life could be
better. And they were just guessing as to what the
conditions might be like."
Two days later, Bush reworded his response. "I used an
unfortunate word, 'guess.' I should have used 'estimate.' "
"And the CIA came and said, 'This is a possibility, this
is a possibility, and this is a possibility,' " Bush
continued. "But what's important for the American people to
hear is reality. And the reality's right here in the form of
the prime minister. And he is explaining what is happening
on the ground. That's the best report."
Rumsfeld, who once dismissed the insurgents as
"dead-enders," still offers a positive portrayal of
prospects and progress in Iraq but has begun to temper his
optimism in public. "The path towards liberty is not smooth
there; it never has been," he said before the Senate Armed
Services Committee last week. "And my personal view is that
a fair assessment requires some patience and some
perspective."
This week, conservative columnist Robert D. Novak
criticized the CIA and Paul Pillar, a national intelligence
officer on the NIC who supervised the preparation of the
assessment. Novak said comments Pillar made about Iraq
during a private dinner in California showed that he and
others at the CIA are at war with the president. Recent and
current intelligence officials interviewed over the last two
days dispute that view.
"Pillar is the ultimate professional," said Daniel Byman,
an intelligence expert and Georgetown University professor
who has worked with Pillar. "If anything, he's too
soft-spoken."
"I'm not surprised if people in the administration were
put on the defensive," said one CIA official, who like many
others interviewed would speak only anonymously, either
because they don't have official authorization to speak or
because they worry about ramifications of criticizing top
administration officials. "We weren't trying to make them
look bad, we're just trying to give them information. Of
course, we're telling them something they don't want to
hear."
As for a war between the CIA and White House, said one
intelligence expert with contacts at the CIA, the State
Department and the Pentagon, "There's a real war going on
here that's not just" the CIA against the administration on
Iraq "but the State Department and the military" as well.
National security officials acknowledge that the upcoming
presidential election also seems to have distorted the
public debate on Iraq.
"Everyone says Iraq certainly has turned out to be more
intense than expected, especially the intensity of
nationalism on the part of the Iraqi people," said Steven
Metz, chairman of the regional strategy and planning
department at the U.S. Army War College. But, he added, "I
don't think the political discourse that we're in the middle
of accurately reflects anything. There's a supercharged
debate on both sides, a movement to out-state each side."
Reports from Iraq have made one Army staff officer
question whether adequate progress is being made there.
"They keep telling us that Iraqi security forces are the
exit strategy, but what I hear from the ground is that they
aren't working," he said. "There's a feeling that Iraqi
security forces are in cahoots with the insurgents and the
general public to get the occupiers out."
He added: "I hope I'm wrong."
Staff writers Walter Pincus and Robin Wright contributed
to this report.
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