Want to See the Next NIE? Sorry...
Read it and weep: A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November . The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said. It is meant to be delivered to Congress before testimony in early April by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus , the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker , according to a letter sent last week by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.). Since the Iraq invasion in 2003, the intelligence community has been more cautious than the military and the White House in assessing politic...