It would be really nice if the foreign press bothered to find out what they are talking about. Right wing and Neo-con are NOT interchangable. They are perverting the words and slapping labels on things they know nothing about.
US Orders New Intelligence Estimate on Iraq
July 31, 2003
The Boston Globe
Bryan Bender
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has ordered a new National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq, the first such sweeping review since before the war, seeking to determine the extent of guerrilla resistance to US occupation and to predict whether the country's rival ethnic groups will be able to establish a stable government.
A National Intelligence Estimate is a top-secret document that pulls together the views of the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research on a subject of intense interest to top policy makers. The last intelligence estimate on Iraq, completed in October 2002, became the focus of scrutiny two weeks ago when the White House declassified portions of its findings on weapons of mass destruction.
This time, the White House has asked spy agencies to conduct a detailed assessment of the "sources of instability" in Iraq, the first formal effort to gauge the strength of the ongoing insurgency against American troops, the influence of Arab fighters arriving from neighboring countries, and alleged efforts by Iran to promote a Shi'ite Muslim-led religious government in Iraq, a senior intelligence official confirmed yesterday.
A spokesman for CIA Director George Tenet, who is overseeing the intelligence estimate, declined to comment.
But intelligence sources said the review would broadly assess the attitudes of the Iraqi people after the war, with a goal of predicting whether a democratic government can begin functioning, and if so, under what conditions.
In the months after President Bush declared an end to major hostilities in Iraq, there has been a steady stream of US combat deaths in ambushes and sniper attacks whose intensity has surprised American commanders. At the same time, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority has been forced to quell anger over the lack of electricity, water, and security in large parts of the country. Specialists who recently assessed the situation for the Pentagon during a visit to Iraq concluded the window for success there is quickly closing as American-led forces compete with other powerful influences that could turn Iraqis away from the United States.
On the guerrilla war, administration officials have made contradictory statements about whether the ongoing attacks, which have become more sophisticated, are being centrally organized or are the work of independent opponents to the US and British presence.
The intelligence review will attempt to answer whether the attacks are the work of former Hussein operatives or have broader backing in the country, intelligence officials said.
And while most of the culprits are believed to be mid-level officers from the former regime's elite military and security services, an unknown number of the foreign fighters have also slipped into Iraq to wage a holy war against US troops, the officials said.
"We don't know what those numbers are," General John Keane, the acting Army chief of staff, told lawmakers on Tuesday. "But we have evidence that they are there. And they come from the plethora of countries: from Syria, from Saudi Arabia, from Egypt, from Sudan."
Meanwhile, a terrorist group that was targeted during the war, Ansar Al-Islam, is also accused of crossing in and out of Iran to launch attacks on US troops.
Iran, meanwhile, is believed to be dispatching Muslim clerics and possibly intelligence operatives into Shi'ite areas of Iraq to influence events. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has repeatedly accused Tehran of being "unhelpful" by meddling in postwar Iraq, something the Iranian government denies. The new intelligence assessment, according to officials, will also look at a variety of other factors that could either frustrate or aid American efforts to stabilize the country and establish the conditions for representative government in a country reeling from years under a brutal dictatorship.
According to a different intelligence official, those factors include assessing the potential impact of Turkey, Iraq's neighbor to the north, which is seeking to halt any aspirations for independence among northern Iraq's Kurdish population; the influence of Arab news channels such as the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera on Iraqi popular opinion; and the role minority Wahhabis and other branches of Sunni Islam might play in the postwar political scene.
The official, who will be involved in the intelligence review, said it might also assess the psychological impact on Iraqis of the arrival of peacekeeping troops from countries other than the United States and Great Britain. It could also weigh the prospects for the recovery of Iraq's oil industry, which would provide a substantial boost to the country's economy, as well as the impact of moving from a state-run economy to one more akin to a free market, he said.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/212/nation/US_orders_new_intelligence_estimate_on_Iraq+.shtmlI find that can be confusing. Neo-con is misused here in the U.S. also.