There have been countless articles over the last couple of weeks that detail how government officials at every level and in every agency see Iraq slipping further and further away, but today’s item in the Washington Post was particularly worthwhile.
A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.
While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and study it at the CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say.
As Kevin Drum noted, this isn’t just another “conditions in Iraq are horrible” story. Rather, it’s an instance in which everyone in the U.S. government except the White House thinks conditions in Iraq are horrible.
* A former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials: “There’s no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments.”
* A U.S. government official who reads the intelligence analyses on Iraq: “Things are definitely not improving.”
* An Army staff officer who served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad through e-mail: “There are things going on that are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year ago.”
* An intelligence expert with contacts at the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon: “There’s a real war going on here that’s not just the [CIA against the administration on Iraq] but the State Department and the military.”
As far as the White House’s spin is concerned, all of these departments and agencies — including State, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the military on the ground — are wrong. “Freedom is on the march” and it’s time to “stay the course.” That’s all. Any thoughts to the contrary are just “pessimism” or “guesses.”
So Bush would have us believe that everyone’s wrong — including our lying eyes — except him. And we should accept this as true because, well, he just likes it better this way.