John Kerry is handed another tool with which to pummel GWB. Can he do it?
In July, a classified National Intelligence Estimate delivered to GWB said the prospects in Iraq range from bad to catastrophic. (Perhaps that’s what the president meant when he said it was a “catastrophic success.”) The estimate makes clear that even under the best of circumstances, American troops will be in Iraq and under threats of attacks for a long time.
The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.
“There’s a significant amount of pessimism,” said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments – concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts’ conclusions – included in the document.
The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence. Such estimates can be requested by the White House or Congress, but this one was initiated by the intelligence council under George J. Tenet, who stepped down as director of central intelligence on July 9, the government officials said.
Of course, the White House has ignored the assessment and implies its intelligence community is out of touch.
“You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and hand-wringers who said it can’t be done,” Mr. McClellan said at a news briefing. “And every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future.”
Wonder if Kerry will characterize McClellan’s comments as evidence that this administration is out of touch with reality. It continues to raise a legitimate question about whether this administration is lying or so anesthetized by the neo-cons that it is incapable of making rational decisions.