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New intelligence reports raise questions about U.S. mission in Iraq
WASHINGTON - A series of new U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq paints a grim picture of the road ahead and concludes that there's little likelihood that President Bush's goals can be attained in the near future.

Instead of stabilizing the country, national elections Jan. 30 are likely to be followed by more violence and could provoke a civil war between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, the CIA and other intelligence agencies predict, according to senior officials who've seen the classified reports. ...

... Two senior intelligence officials with access to classified reporting said Islamic militants allied with or inspired by Osama bin Laden were forging ties to Iraqi nationalists and remnants of former dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. The linkage is similar to the one that so-called "Afghan Arabs" formed with Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the Soviet Union withdrew from that country, they said.

The Bush administration claimed before invading Iraq that Saddam had strong ties to international terrorism, but most counterterrorism experts dispute that and no evidence has been found to support the claim.

"The sad thing is we have created what the administration claimed we were intervening to prevent: an Iraq/al-Qaida linkage," one of the senior intelligence officials said.

The officials who were more pessimistic spoke on condition of anonymity, because the latest intelligence assessments are classified and their views are at odds with public statements from the White House.

Even in their public remarks, top military officers and policy-makers are becoming more cautionary about the road ahead in Iraq.

All major U.S. intelligence agencies share a pessimistic prognosis for Iraq's future, according to a senior administration official. The assessment of the State Department's intelligence bureau is so grim that it's referred to as the "I agree with Scowcroft's analysis" report....

... The public report by the National Intelligence Council appears to contradict the Bush administration's contention that the invasion of Iraq struck a blow against terrorism.

The report by the council, an advisory board of top intelligence analysts that's independent of the CIA, says Iraq has taken the place once held by Afghanistan as a proving ground for terrorist leaders.

"The al-Qaida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," says the unclassified report, "Mapping the Global Future," which is an analysis of trends to the year 2020.

"Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are `professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself," it says.