Iraq Is Deteriorating.

The New York Times (NYT) on Dec. 8 reported a classified cable from the CIA's station chief in Baghdad warning that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating and may not rebound anytime soon. Citing US "government officials" as sources, The NYT said the cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a year-long tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security. It said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior CIA official who recently visited Iraq.

The NYT reported US officials as describing the two assessments as having been "mixed", saying they did describe Iraq as having made important progress, particularly in terms of its political process, and credited Iraqis with being resilient. But overall, the officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq.

The cable 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.

Together, the appraisals - which followed 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 on Jan. 30. The cable was sent to CIA headquarters after US forces completed what military commanders had described as a significant victory, with the retaking of Falluja, the base of the Sunni Iraqi insurgency, in mid-November.

US 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 US had made more progress than was described in fighting the Iraqi insurgency. But the top US military commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey Jr., also reviewed the cable and did not dispute its conclusions, the officials said according to The NYT.

The NYT said the station chief's cable had been widely disseminated outside the CIA, and was initially described by a government official who read the document and who praised it as unusually candid. Other government officials who have read or been briefed on the document later described its contents.

The officials refused to be identified by name or affiliation because of the delicacy of the issue. (The station chief cannot be publicly identified, because he continues to work undercover).

The NYT said senior intelligence officials including John McLaughlin, the departing CIA deputy director, disputed those assertions. The paper added: "One government official said the new assessments might suggest that Porter Goss, the new [CIA] director..., was willing to listen to views different from those publicly expressed by the administration.

A separate, more formal National Intelligence Estimate prepared in July and sent to the White House in August by US intelligence agencies also presented a dark forecast for Iraq's future through the end of 2005".

Among three possibilities described in that document, according to The NYT, 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, President 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, mainly Wahhabis who have been killing an increasing number of Shiites.

The NYT said the end-of-tour cable from the CIA chief, spelling out an assessment of the situation on the ground, was 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 US intelligence official in Iraq since December 2003". (The station chief oversees an intelligence operation that includes about 300 people, making Baghdad the largest CIA station since the wartime post in Saigon, Vietnam).

The senior CIA official who visited Iraq and then briefed counterparts from other government agencies was Michael Kostiw, a senior adviser to Goss. The NYT said one government official who knew about Kostiw's briefings described them as "an honest portrayal of the situation on the ground". Goss himself made his first foreign trip as the intelligence director recently, with stops in Britain and Afghanistan, but he did not visit Iraq, the government officials said.

At the White House on Dec. 6, President Bush offered no hint of pessimism as he met with Iraq's interim president, Ghazi Al-Yawer. Despite the security challenges, Bush said the US continued to favour the polls scheduled for 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".