Bleak view said wider at security agencies

By Dana Priest and Thomas Ricks, 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, 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 H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight and study the Iraqi insurgency at the CIA, 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 US government official who reads the intelligence analyses on Iraq.

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 US commander for the Middle East, General 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 council said, Iraq could be expected to achieve a ’’tenuous stability" over the next 18 months.

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.

Washington Post