That long awaitied National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is finally coming Monday, according to outgoing Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.
He made the remark during this morning’s hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The NIE, requested last July by Democrats, has been a long time coming. The situation came to a head a couple of weeks ago when an administration official reportedly explained in a closed door session of the Senate Judiciary Committee that intelligence officials were just too busy getting the plans together for President Bush’s escalation of troops in Iraq to finish up the NIE.
Outraged, Democrats demanded that Negroponte finish up the estimate, which, they argued, should have been completed before Bush’s announcement of a new strategy in Iraq, and not after.
So now the NIE is finally on its way. What will it say? The public — and Congress — will just have to wait until next week. Negroponte refused to characterize the findings of the estimate in any way.
A full transcript of Negroponte’s remarks below the fold….
Transcript of Negroponte’s remarks:
Well, I anticipate questions on Iraq â Senator, I prepared a few remarks here that I think are responsive to that, because I expect that we’ll be transmitting the national intelligence estimate to Congress the first thing next week, by Monday at the latest. And of course I want the national intelligence estimate to speak for itself, but what I would like to say is that my belief that success in Iraq remains possible is based on my experience in dealing with Iraq as US ambassador to the UN and ambassador to Iraq and as director of national intelligence. And I don’t think I’m at variance with the intelligence community in my judgments, and here’s what I would say: Iraq is at a precarious juncture. That means the situation could deteriorate, but there are prospects for increasing stability in Iraq. And achieving increased stability will depend on several factors, among them the extent to which the Iraqi government and political leaders can establish effective national institutions that transcend sectarian or ethnic interests, and within this context a willingness of Iraqi security forces to pursue extremist elements of all kinds. It will also depend on the extent to which extremists, most notably al-Qaeda in Iraq, can be defeated in their attempts to foment inter-sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunnis. And lastly, the extent to which Iraq’s neighbors stop the flow of militants and munitions across their borders. So I think that progress is possible in all these dimensions, laying the foundations for success.
