Report: Iraqi stability growing

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.

Democrats — including the party”s 2008 presidential hopefuls — recently began acknowledging military successes in Iraq while bemoaning the failures of the fledgling Iraqi government. It allows them to avoid criticism for naysaying U.S. military achievements while still advocating a speedy pullout.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said that the estimate confirms Republicans’ views about the success of troops battling al Qaeda and that the rapid withdrawal from Iraq that Democrats have pursued legislatively will lead to greater instability.

The report shows the “successes of our troops in combating al Qaeda in Iraq and underscores the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal,” Mr. Boehner said.

The White House said the president would await the mid-September progress report from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq, and then report to Congress about the administration’s war plans. That was the process designated in the emergency war-funding bill Congress passed in March.

“It also is the appropriate course of action to see where things stand by hearing from our U.S. representatives on the ground, where things stand on the security front and where things stand on the political front,” Mr. Johndroe said.

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