The public report by the National Intelligence Council appears to contradict the Bush administration's contention that the invasion of Iraq struck a blow against terrorism. The report by the council, an advisory board of top intelligence analysts that's independent of the CIA, says Iraq has taken the place once held by Afghanistan as a proving ground for terrorist leaders. "The al-Qaida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," says the unclassified report, "Mapping the Global Future," which is an analysis of trends to the year 2020. "Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are `professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself," it says.
Here is the reason that there are rumors Bush is looking for a way out of Iraq. Perhaps he has finally accepted that he's failed.
Funny thing is, I've seen no one else pick up on these reported rumors. Is the LA Times scoop difficult to verify? Others including the article after the link restates Bush's public statements of the election being a referendum on his approach to Iraq. The man would have to be delusional to believe that. I lean towards believing the rumors that he wants to convince the Shiites to accept military advisors rather than US Troops.
Then the NY Times has it that the Shiites are most likely to ask the US to set a timetable to leave Iraq according to "senior administration officials" refering to the recent crop of intelligence reports.
Sounds to me that Bush does or soon will recognize the Iraqi military mission as a house of cards.
Pessimistic Intelligence | New Iraqi Govt Expected to Press for US Withdrawl
Posted on Mon, Jan. 17, 2005
New intelligence reports raise questions about U.S. mission in Iraq
By Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - A series of new U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq paints a grim picture of the road ahead and concludes that there's little likelihood that President Bush's goals can be attained in the near future.
Instead of stabilizing the country, national elections Jan. 30 are likely to be followed by more violence and could provoke a civil war between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, the CIA and other intelligence agencies predict, according to senior officials who've seen the classified reports.
A CIA spokesman, Tom Crispell, said he was unable to comment. A White House spokeswoman had no immediate comment. The federal government was closed Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
A new public report by the National Intelligence Council concludes that instead of diminishing terrorism, U.S.-occupied Iraq has replaced prewar Afghanistan as a breeding and training ground for terrorists who may disperse to conduct attacks elsewhere.
Two senior intelligence officials with access to classified reporting said Islamic militants allied with or inspired by Osama bin Laden were forging ties to Iraqi nationalists and remnants of former dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. The linkage is similar to the one that so-called "Afghan Arabs" formed with Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the Soviet Union withdrew from that country, they said.
The Bush administration claimed before invading Iraq that Saddam had strong ties to international terrorism, but most counterterrorism experts dispute that and no evidence has been found to support the claim.
"The sad thing is we have created what the administration claimed we were intervening to prevent: an Iraq/al-Qaida linkage," one of the senior intelligence officials said.
The officials who were more pessimistic spoke on condition of anonymity, because the latest intelligence assessments are classified and their views are at odds with public statements from the White House.
Even in their public remarks, top military officers and policy-makers are becoming more cautionary about the road ahead in Iraq.
All major U.S. intelligence agencies share a pessimistic prognosis for Iraq's future, according to a senior administration official. The assessment of the State Department's intelligence bureau is so grim that it's referred to as the "I agree with Scowcroft's analysis" report.
That's a reference to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush. Scowcroft said earlier this month that the Iraqi elections could deepen the conflict and "we may be seeing an incipient civil war."
Bush and his national security team took issue with Scowcroft's remarks, but the pessimistic indicators have led a growing number of senior U.S. military and intelligence officials to say they worry that the mission in Iraq is becoming untenable for the American military.
The United States faces an agonizing choice, they say, because an American withdrawal would hand militant Islam a huge victory and probably doom the transitional Iraqi government that will be chosen in less than two weeks.
Another possibility is that the transitional government, expected to be dominated by Shiites, could give the United States a timetable to leave. The White House and State Department have said such a request would be honored.
The reports, also by the CIA and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, were shared and discussed at a recent U.S. intelligence community conference.
Intelligence analysts expect the Iraqi insurgents, who are primarily Sunni, to have three post-election goals:
-Crippling and discrediting the new government by assassinating key officials, killing police officers and demonstrating that the government and its American allies can't secure the country.
-Fomenting Sunni-Shiite violence.
-Driving the Americans out of Iraq by undermining public and political support there and the United States for the U.S. mission.
Bush has given no sign that he plans to change approaches in Iraq and has declined to set his own timeline for American troops to withdraw.
The president told The Washington Post in an interview published Sunday that he believed that the 2004 election ratified his Iraq policies.
"I'm more patient than some, but also mindful that we've got to get the Iraqis up and running as quickly as possible, so they can defeat these terrorists," he said.
At the same time, the Bush administration has tried to lower public expectations of what the elections for an Iraqi national assembly can accomplish.
Army Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of multinational forces in northwest Iraq, said Saturday that insurgents were likely to switch their focus from disrupting the election to threatening those who won.
"I think there are some threats that will emerge in the post-election period which are very, very important," Ham said.
Outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told National Public Radio last week that while civil war was not in the offing, "I think most in the government expect the violence to continue long after these elections."
The public report by the National Intelligence Council appears to contradict the Bush administration's contention that the invasion of Iraq struck a blow against terrorism.
The report by the council, an advisory board of top intelligence analysts that's independent of the CIA, says Iraq has taken the place once held by Afghanistan as a proving ground for terrorist leaders.
"The al-Qaida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," says the unclassified report, "Mapping the Global Future," which is an analysis of trends to the year 2020.
"Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are `professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself," it says.
---
(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Joseph L. Galloway contributed to this report.)
© 2005 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.realcities.com
Military Outlook: U.S. Intelligence Says Iraqis Will Press for Withdrawal
January 19, 2005
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - The Iraqi government that emerges
from elections on Jan. 30 will almost certainly ask the
United States to set a specific timetable for withdrawing
its troops, according to new American intelligence
estimates described by senior administration officials.
The reports also warn that the elections will be followed
by more violence, including an increased likelihood of
clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, possibly even leading
to civil war, the officials said.
This pessimism is consistent with other assessments over
the past six months, including a classified cable sent in
November by the Central Intelligence Agency's departing
station chief in Baghdad. But the new assessments, from the
C.I.A. and the Defense and State Departments, focus more
closely on the aftermath of the election, including its
potential implications for American policy, the officials
said.
The assessments are based on the expectation that a Shiite
Arab coalition will win the elections, in which Shiites are
expected to make up a vast majority of voters, the
officials said. Leaders of the coalition have promised
voters they will press Washington for a timetable for
withdrawal, and the assessments say the new Iraqi
government will feel bound, at least publicly, to meet that
commitment.
Such a request would put new pressure on the Bush
administration, which has said it would honor an Iraqi
request but has declined to set a timetable for withdrawing
the 173,000 American and other foreign troops now in Iraq.
Officials, including Colin L. Powell, the secretary of
state, have said such decisions should be based on security
needs, which include training more Iraqis.
"Nobody wants to withdraw in such a way as to leave Iraq
ill prepared to confront an insurgency which is not going
to disappear," a senior administration official said. "So
the focus is, how can we maximize our training program to
get as many Iraqis out there as quickly as possible."
The official said the United States was hoping that the new
Iraqi government would settle for a schedule based on the
military situation, not the calendar. But the official said
there was uncertainty about how vigorously the new Iraqi
government would press for a reduction of American forces.
"At this point, it's very speculative to talk about a
timetable, and when and how they want us to leave," the
official said.
In an interview last Thursday on the PBS program "Newshour
With Jim Lehrer," Mr. Powell said that he "would like to
see our troops come out as quickly as possible" and that
"the Iraqis would like to see our troops come out as
quickly as possible." But he added, "It's not possible
right now to say that by the end of 2005 we'll be down to
such and such a number."
The government officials who described the intelligence
assessments report to different agencies and included both
critics and supporters of the war in Iraq. All said they
had read or been briefed on the documents, but they
insisted on anonymity, saying they did not want to
overshadow recent comments by Mr. Powell and President
Bush.
In an interview with The Washington Post published over the
weekend, Mr. Bush declined to be specific about any kind of
a timetable for a withdrawal. But administration officials
said that in a meeting last Thursday, Mr. Bush's principal
national security advisers had discussed how the United
States might respond if the new Iraq government put forward
such a request.
The grim tone of the new intelligence assessments was first
reported by Knight Ridder newspapers in articles that
appeared Monday in The Miami Herald and elsewhere.
In recent days, Mr. Powell and others among Mr. Bush's
senior advisers have become more direct in acknowledging
that the anti-American insurgency is not likely to fade
soon.
"It is a raging insurgency, and we are not trying to
dismiss it or downplay it," Mr. Powell said in the
"Newshour" interview. "The insurgency is not going to go
away as a result of this election," he said. "In fact,
perhaps the insurgents might become more emboldened" if
they succeeded in dissuading large numbers of Sunnis from
voting.
Under Saddam Hussein the Sunnis, who make up 20 percent of
the population, were the dominant group in Iraq, but
whether or not Sunnis take part, the election is almost
certain to transfer that role to the Shiites, who comprise
60 percent of all Iraqis. Kurds account for most of the
remaining 20 percent.
Mr. Bush, asked in the interview with The Washington Post
whether American troops might begin leaving Iraq in 2005,
said: "The way I would put it is, American troops will be
leaving as quickly as possible, but they won't be leaving
until we have completed our mission, and part of the
mission is to train Iraqis so they can fight the
terrorists. And the sooner the Iraqis are prepared - better
prepared, better equipped to fight, the sooner our troops
will start coming home."
At the White House meeting last week, one senior military
official warned that Iraq was already emerging as
"Afghanistan West," becoming a magnet and haven for
militants, as Afghanistan did for Osama bin Laden and Al
Qaeda under the Taliban.
In the Washington Post interview, Mr. Bush said he shared
the concern that "this could happen," saying: "If we're not
diligent and firm, there will be pockets of - parts of the
world that become pockets for terrorists to find safe haven
and to train. And we have a duty to disrupt that."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/politics/19intel.html?ex=1107160531&ei=1&en=44a9da6dbf567aa2
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