U.S. intelligence agencies have written a mixed report on Iraq, finding some progress but judging that the Baghdad government may not be able to carry it forward, a defense official said Thursday.
Declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq are to be released Thursday afternoon. Like an earlier report released in February, the document is expected to cover the pressing issues facing Iraq: its ethnic and sectarian strife, the troubles of the elected government, and the meddling of neighboring Iran.
The defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the report on the record, said it will find "some progress with Sunnis" fighting against al-Qaida.
Sunni insurgents in some areas have turned on al-Qaida in a program in which U.S. commanders negotiate cease-fires and try to incorporate the fighters into Iraqi government security forces.
The report also warns, as some commanders on the ground have, that extremists could attempt sensational attacks to create a "mini-Tet"_ a reference to the 1968 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Tet offensive that undermined public support for the Vietnam War in the United States.
The assessment also expresses deep doubts that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki can overcome sectarian divisions and meet benchmarks intended to promote political unity, The New York Times reported in Thursday editions. The report cited unidentified officials.
The report represents the collaborative judgments of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and the intelligence organization of each military service.
Their assessment comes at a time of renewed tension in relations between Washington and Baghdad.
President Bush had appeared on Tuesday to be distancing himself from the Iraqi leader when he said at a North American summit in Canada: "Clearly, the Iraqi government's got to do more." The White House denied Bush was backing away from al-Maliki, but it was a lukewarm endorsement compared with last November, when Bush called al-Maliki "the right guy for Iraq."
Al-Maliki, on a trip to Syria, quickly lashed back at U.S. criticism. He called it "discourteous," said no one has the right to impose timetables on his elected government, and that Iraq can "find friends elsewhere."
Under pressure to reaffirm his backing for the Iraqi leader, Bush said Wednesday that "Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, good man with a difficult job, and I support him."
Echoing the frustration of many in Washington, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said this week that progress on national issues had been "extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned."
Slow political progress in Iraq is at the heart of the U.S. military troop buildup Bush announced in January. The president justified sending more troops to increase security and give Iraqi political leaders the breathing space to reconcile.
Crocker and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, are due to report next month on how much progress is being made with the buildup, which now has some 162,000 troops, the highest of the four-year-old war.
Based on their information, the White House is to give a mid-September assessment of the troop buildup and determine the next steps in Iraq.
Intelligence agencies have not been particularly optimistic about the near-term prospects in Iraq for some time. The estimate released Thursday is an update to a February intelligence report on the situation.
Then, the top analysts in the U.S. spy community concluded that Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to craft a lasting political settlement or improve their security capabilities in the next year and a half.
They also found that growing and entrenched polarization between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, inadequate Iraqi security forces, weak leaders and the success of extremists' efforts to use violence to exacerbate the sectarian war all created a situation that would be difficult to improve.