The New York Times is reporting that the CIA’s National Intelligence Council warned President Bush in two classified reports in January 2003 that an invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict. The existence of these two classified reports had not been previously disclosed and offer new proof that the President was warned before the invasion that the Iraq invasion could lead to destabilize the region. The report was written by the same group that wrote the recent classified National Intelligence Estimate that predicted Iraq could face a civil war if the security situation doesn’t improve. Bush recently dismissed the CIA report describing the conclusions of the reports as “guesses” by the CIA on the situation.
[ From the New York Times piece:
The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.
The contents of the two assessments had not been previously disclosed. They were described by the officials after two weeks in which the White House had tried to
minimize the council’s latest report, which was prepared this summer and read by senior officials early this month.Last week, Mr. Bush dismissed the latest intelligence reports, saying its authors were “just guessing” about the future, though he corrected himself later, calling it an “estimate.”
–BL ]
