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Iraq study warned of civil war
White House, Military Dismissed '03 Analysis
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
03/01/06 "Knight
Ridder" -- -- WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence
agencies repeatedly warned the White House beginning more than two
years ago that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was
likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former
senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports.
Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study,
called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003
that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions --
not foreign terrorists -- and drew strength from deep grievances,
including the presence of U.S. troops.
The existence of the top-secret document, which was the subject of a
bitter three-month debate among U.S. intelligence agencies, has not
been previously disclosed to a wide public audience.
The reports received a cool reception from Bush administration
policy-makers at the White House and the office of Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, according to the former officials, who discussed
them publicly for the first time.
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others
continued to describe the insurgency as a containable threat, posed
mainly by former supporters of Saddam Hussein, criminals and
non-Iraqi terrorists -- even as the U.S. intelligence community was
warning otherwise.
Robert Hutchings, the chair of the National Intelligence Council
from 2003 to 2005, said the October 2003 study was part of a
``steady stream'' of dozens of intelligence reports warning Bush and
his top lieutenants that the insurgency was intensifying and
expanding.
``Frankly, senior officials simply weren't ready to pay attention to
analysis that didn't conform to their own optimistic scenarios,''
Hutchings said.
The NIC is the intelligence community's foremost group of senior
analysts, and as its chair, Hutchings presided over the drafting of
the October 2003 report and other analyses of the insurgency.
Tuesday in Congress, Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, the director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified that the insurgency
``remains strong and resilient.''
Maples said that while Iraqi terrorists and foreign fighters conduct
some of the most spectacular attacks, disaffected Iraqi Sunnis make
up the insurgency's core. ``So long as Sunni Arabs are denied access
to resources and lack a meaningful presence in government, they will
continue to resort to violence,'' he told the Senate Armed Services
Committee.
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