Rumsfeld, who once dismissed the insurgents as "dead-enders," still offers a positive portrayal of prospects and progress in Iraq but has begun to temper his optimism in public. "The path towards liberty is not smooth there; it never has been," he said before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "And my personal view is that a fair assessment requires some patience and some perspective."
This week, conservative columnist Robert D. Novak criticized the CIA and Paul Pillar, a national intelligence officer on the NIC who supervised the preparation of the assessment. Novak said comments Pillar made about Iraq during a private dinner in California showed that he and others at the CIA are at war with the president. Recent and current intelligence officials interviewed over the last two days dispute that view.
"Pillar is the ultimate professional," said Daniel Byman, an intelligence expert and Georgetown University professor who has worked with Pillar. "If anything, he's too soft-spoken."
"I'm not surprised if people in the administration were put on the defensive," said one CIA official, who like many others interviewed would speak only anonymously, either because they don't have official authorization to speak or because they worry about ramifications of criticizing top administration officials. "We weren't trying to make them look bad, we're just trying to give them information. Of course, we're telling them something they don't want to hear."
As for a war between the CIA and White House, said one intelligence expert with contacts at the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon, "There's a real war going on here that's not just" the CIA against the administration on Iraq "but the State Department and the military" as well.
National security officials acknowledge that the upcoming presidential election also seems to have distorted the public debate on Iraq.
"Everyone says Iraq certainly has turned out to be more intense than expected, especially the intensity of nationalism on the part of the Iraqi people," said Steven Metz, chairman of the regional strategy and planning department at the U.S. Army War College. But, he added, "I don't think the political discourse that we're in the middle of accurately reflects anything. There's a supercharged debate on both sides, a movement to out-state each side."
Reports from Iraq have made one Army staff officer question whether adequate progress is being made there.
"They keep telling us that Iraqi security forces are the exit strategy, but what I hear from the ground is that they aren't working," he said. "There's a feeling that Iraqi security forces are in cahoots with the insurgents and the general public to get the occupiers out."
He added: "I hope I'm wrong."
Staff writers Walter Pincus and Robin Wright contributed to this report.
