Report: Iraqi stability growing

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Growing Sunni opposition to al Qaeda and in some cases the perception that U.S. troops will leave the country are key factors behind recent and growing stability in Iraq, according to a major U.S. intelligence report based on findings from 16 agencies.

The updated National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a consensus view of the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other services, says "measurable" security improvements were made in war-torn Iraq since January and will expand modestly in the next 12 months with continued military pressure on insurgents.

Within hours of the report"s release, Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia called on President Bush to bring some U.S. troops home by Christmas, and Army Secretary Pete Geren ruled out extending troop deployments beyond the current 15 months.

Mr. Warner, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said a small-scale withdrawal — perhaps 5,000 of the 160,000 troops in Iraq — would prod the Iraqi government toward the political reconciliation needed to stem sectarian violence.

The report"s unclassified key judgments warned that "levels of insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high, and the Iraqi government will continue to struggle to achieve national-level political reconciliation."

White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe, with the vacationing President Bush in Crawford, Texas, said strategy changes are paying off, and classified parts of the report are being used to plan the way ahead in Iraq.

"While the February NIE concluded that conditions in Iraq were worsening, today's key judgments clearly show that the military's counterinsurgency strategy, fully operational since mid-summer, has begun to slow the rapidly increasing violence and patterns of the violence we've been seeing in Iraq," he said.

The new estimate provided ammunition for both Capitol Hill Democrats and Republicans as the sides entrench themselves for continued legislative battles in September over the war"s future.

"Today"s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq confirms what most Americans already know: Our troops are mired in an Iraqi civil war, and the president"s escalation strategy has failed to produce the political results he promised to our troops and the American people," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat and a presidential candidate, said the estimate shows that the Bush administration policy in Iraq is "fatally flawed" because it confirmed the weaknesses of the Iraqi government.