Iraq may be on path to civil war, CIA officials warn By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON — CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said yesterday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment President Bush gave in his State of the Union address. The CIA officers' bleak assessment was delivered orally to Washington this week, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified information involved. The warning echoed growing fears that Iraq's Shiite majority, which until now has accepted the U.S. occupation grudgingly, could turn to violence if its demands for direct elections are spurned. Meanwhile, Iraq's Kurdish minority is pressing for autonomy and shares of oil revenue. "Both the Shiites and the Kurds think that now's their time," one intelligence officer said. "They think that if they don't get what they want now, they'll probably never get it. Both of them feel they've been betrayed by the United States before." (snip) http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001841528_cia22.html
I think at this point we need to start asking ourselves why the CIA always seems to report the negative aspect to Iraq, and hardly ever talks about schools being built, bridges being repaired, etc. I think it would behoov the obviously liberal Central Intelligence Agency to give a more balanced portrayal of the situation in Iraq.
Good point, if the CIA doesn't love this country they should get out. They are aiding the terrorists and being unpatriotic with this stuff. CIA can just go to France since they are both obvious the devil.
MacBeth, the scary part about this is, guys like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, and the rest of that little cabal actually think this is true which is why they formed their own little mini-CIA to selectively edit/manipulate/"stovepipe" evidence re: Iraq.
I think it's clear the career spooks are ticked off at the way this administration has abused the intelligence and the people that acquire and analyze that intelligence. Someone at Langley is very smart... slow, steady leaks...
I agree, although to be literal, they believed that the intel was too positive re: Iraq. This is one thing that blows my mind; the fact that we know for a fact that the White House set up an intel division dealing almost exclusively with Iraq, whose entire purpose was to find negative intel regarding Iraq and terrorism/WMD, because those in power didn't think the intel they were getting from all the usual agencies was negative enough...and yet some people still won't admit that the administration was being selective with intel, or was intent on going into Iraq before 9-11. Unbelievable.
re: unbelievable - after reading the Franken book on O'Reilly, Hannity, and Coulter, and various web searches to verify the data, it's obvious that right wing radicals believe that power at any cost is the goal and the means are demagoguery and repetition of lies until people have them in the back of their mind as *truths*. They can't ever admit a lie as a straight out lie, it's always someone else's fault. We're f'ed. A directly elected popular government will not want us around. It's politically expedient for us to pull out as soon as possible. We cannot force them to respect the rights of minorities - Islamic fundies are the same as fundies around the world and 60% of the population are a bunch of Islamic fundies.
