Intelligence Community Debunks Rosy White House Report

Yesterday, President Bush held a news conference to coincide with an interim White House report to Congress on the war in Iraq-Nam. His headline was that the Iraq-namese are showing signs of progress toward meeting 8 of the 18 benchmarks set. He found this grounds for optimism. Oddly, in Wednesday’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Thomas Fingar, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's top analytical body, said things were much worse. Odder still, the press didn’t call on Mr. Bush to account for the discrepancies.

Mr. Bush said in his press conference, “Those of us who believe the battle in Iraq can and must be won see the satisfactory performance on several of the security benchmarks as a cause for optimism.” By September 15, when the final report is due by law, Mr. Bush said, “We’ll ... have a clearer picture of how the new strategy is unfolding, and be in a better position to judge where we need to make any adjustments.”

In the National Intelligence Council’s report to Congress about which Mr. Fingar testified, the section on Iraq-Nam was far less hopeful. “[E]ven if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation.” In other words, even if the surge succeeds in boosting security (and the report says it really is too early to tell), it won’t do much good for America nor for the Iraq-Namese in establishing a political solution.

The NIC’s report also observes, “With political reconciliation showing few appreciable gains, we have noted that Iraqis increasingly resort to violence. The struggle among and within Iraqi communities over national identity and the distribution of power has eclipsed attacks by Iraqis against the Coalition Forces as the greatest impediment to Iraq’s future as a peaceful, democratic, and unified state.” That is, the fighting is largely now a civil war in which the American troops are caught. If they stay or if they go, the fighting will continue.

The difference between the two assessments is much the same as the assessments that preceded the attack on Iraq-Nam. The intelligence community remains staffed by people whose job it is to study the global situation and offer their educated opinions as to that situation. The White House remains occupied by the very people who argued for war based on the “certainty” that the Saddamites possessed weapons of mass destruction. It’s time to listen to the professionals.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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