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Security officials see thorns, not roses, in Iraq
DANA PRIEST AND THOMAS RICKS; The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe 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.

This view is according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and departments of state and defense.


While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight and study the Iraqi insurgency 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."


"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 Powell acknowledged that the insurgency is strengthening and that anti-Americanism in the Middle East was 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 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 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 assessment, completed in July, that gave a dramatically different outlook than the administration's and represented a consensus at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.


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 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 CIA director, 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 Sept. 21. "It said that life could by lousy. Life could be OK. 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 presents a positive portrayal of prospects and progress in Iraq but has begun to temper his optimism in public. "The path toward 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, columnist Robert Novak criticized the CIA and Paul Pillar, a national intelligence officer on the NIC who supervised 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."


As for a war between the CIA and the White House, one intelligence expert with contacts at the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon said, "There's a real war going on here that's not just the agency (CIA)" against the administration on Iraq, "but the State Department and the military" as well.


National security officials acknowledge that the Nov. 2 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."


"The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."


A FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER