WASHINGTON A classified cable sent by the CIA's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.
[...]
[T]he officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, bringing more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon in the ability of the Iraqi government to assert authority and build the economy.
[...]
[T]he appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said.
[...]
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, was said by the officials to have filed a written dissent, objecting to one finding as too harsh, on the ground that the United States had made more progress than was described in fighting the Iraqi insurgency. But the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, General George Casey Jr., also reviewed the cable and did not dispute its conclusions, the officials said.
[...]
[S]enior intelligence officials including John McLaughlin, the departing deputy director of central intelligence, have disputed those assertions.
[...]
A separate, more formal National Intelligence Estimate prepared in July and sent to the White House in August by U.S. intelligence agencies also presented a dark forecast for Iraq's future through the end of 2005. Among three possible developments described in that document, the best case was tenuous stability and the worst case included a chain of events leading to civil war.
[...]
After news reports disclosed the existence of the National Intelligence Estimate, which also remains classified, Bush initially dismissed the conclusions as nothing more than a guess. Since then, however, violence in Iraq has increased, including the recent formation of a Shiite militia intended to carry out attacks on Sunni militants
The end-of-tour cable from the station chief, spelling out an assessment of the situation on the ground, is a less formal product than a National Intelligence Estimate. But it was drafted by an officer who is highly regarded within the CIA and who as station chief in Baghdad has been the top U.S. intelligence official in Iraq since December 2003.
[...]
At the White House on Monday, Bush himself offered no hint of pessimism as he met with Iraq's president, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar. Despite the security challenges, Bush said, the United States continues to favor the voting scheduled for Iraq on Jan. 30 to "send the clear message to the few people in Iraq that are trying to stop the march toward democracy that they cannot stop elections."
I'm a war president!
No comments:
Post a Comment