Insurgency is working, 3
agencies warn Bush
Mercurynews.com
By Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder
Posted on Sat, Dec. 18, 2004
WASHINGTON - The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the
State Department have warned President Bush that the United
States and its Iraqi allies are not winning the battle against
Iraqi insurgents who are trying to derail the country's Jan. 30
elections, according to administration officials.
The officials, who agreed to speak only on condition of
anonymity because intelligence estimates are classified, said the
battle in Iraq was not lost and that successful elections might
yet be held next month.
But they said the warnings -- including one delivered this
week to Bush by CIA Director Porter Goss -- indicated that U.S.
forces had not been able to stop the insurgents' intimidation of
Iraqi voters, candidates and others who want to participate in
the elections.
``We don't have an answer to the intimidation,'' one senior
official said.
Nor have the United States and the interim Iraqi government
been able to find any divisions they can exploit to divide and
conquer the Sunni Muslim insurgency, the intelligence reports
say.
The elections are key to U.S. strategy in Iraq, and Bush and
his team have insisted that they proceed as scheduled.
The president and other top White House officials have
steadfastly predicted that the insurgency will fail, even as they
have acknowledged lately that violence is rising.
``The terrorists will do all they can to delay and disrupt
free elections in Iraq, and they will fail,'' Bush told cheering
Marines last week in Camp Pendleton.
But several of the officials said a vital effort to woo
Sunnis, who held privileged status under Saddam Hussein and are
now spearheading the insurgency, has not borne fruit.
``It all boils down to the aura of the former regime. I think
there are a lot of people sitting on the fence. They don't want
to be seen as collaborating,'' one defense official said.
The Iraqi election is key to Bush's oft-stated belief that
democracy and elections can transform the troubled Middle East.
That broader policy faces another reality check Jan. 9, when
Palestinians go to the polls to select a leader to replace the
late Yasser Arafat.
Bush and Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice have
signaled that pushing political and economic reform in the Middle
East will be a second-term priority.
Bush, speaking at Camp Pendleton, held Iraq up as a model:
``The success of democracy in Iraq will also inspire others
across the Middle East to defend their own freedom.''
Yet even a successful election in Iraq might not be the model
the United States wants to hold up to the rest of the region.
Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims are expected to dominate the
parliament, and there are concerns that the new government could
have close ties to Iran and a theocratic bent.
A theocratic state in Iraq ``is not exactly what the United
States or the Europeans had in mind before the war,'' said
Abdeslam Maghraoui, the director of the Muslim World Initiative
at the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace.
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