Insurgency risk discounted by White House.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House -- starting more than two years ago -- that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports.
"Among the warnings was a major secret study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded the insurgency was fueled by local conditions -- not foreign terrorists -- and by deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops."
Robert Hutchings, chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2005, said the October 2003 study was part of a steady stream of dozens of intelligence reports warning Bush and his top lieutenants that the insurgency was intensifying and expanding.
"Frankly, senior officials simply weren't ready to pay attention to analysis that didn't conform to their own optimistic scenarios," Hutchings said.
"The mind-set downtown was that people were willing to accept that things were pretty bad, but not that they were going to get worse, so our analyses tended to get dismissed as 'nay-saying and hand-wringing,' to quote the president's press spokesman," he said.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...WS07/603010447
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