White House Gives Iraq Mixed Marks in Report

White House officials said they tried to craft a candid report, while recognizing that supporters and opponents would find evidence in it to bolster their views.

Meanwhile, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, senior intelligence officials said there has been no meaningful positive change in Iraq since January, when a starkly pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate warned that even if security improved, violent sectarian divisions threatened to destroy the government.

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence and chief of the National Intelligence Council, which wrote the January estimate, said that assessment did not change. While the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made "halting efforts to bridge the divisions and restore commitment to a unified country . . . it has made limited progress on key legislation," such as the oil revenue law and a range of power-sharing measures.

"Communal violence and scant common ground between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds continues to polarize politics," Fingar said yesterday. Even the majority-Shiite bloc that Maliki heads, he said, "does not present a unified front" and has continued to deteriorate in recent months. Meanwhile, the provision of essential services seen as crucial in building support for the government, including electricity and oil production, remains below prewar levels, he said. Some have declined over the past six months.

"The analysis that the community made in January . . . appears to be borne out by events since then," he said. "That assessment focused on the imperative for reducing levels of violence in the country as a prerequisite for beginning to restore confidence among the competing, fractured body politic and the groups in the political system." While the increase in U.S. troops is "having an effect, it has not yet had a sufficient effect on the violence, in my judgment, to move the country to a place that the serious obstacles to reconciliation can be overcome," Fingar said.

"It will be difficult and time-consuming to bridge the political gulf when violence levels are reduced, and they have not yet been reduced significantly," he said, in what he called his "most optimistic projection."

Retired Maj. Gen. John R. Landry, also a member of the intelligence council, said there have been some improvements in the Iraqi army, although much less so with the Iraqi police, who are charged with holding urban areas. But Iraqi security forces remain "ridden with a certain degree of sectarian infiltration" and lack the logistics and support capabilities that would allow them to take over from U.S. forces in most of the country, he said.

Asked by Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) whether the Iraqi forces were in a position to bring "some sort of successful closure" to the U.S. troop presence, Landry said that was "not likely."

Iraqi military leadership and capability will require "years to develop, not months," he said.

Fingar, Landry and several other senior intelligence officials spoke about Iraq in the context of an overall global assessment that highlighted international threats. Referring to al-Qaeda's plans for Iraq, Fingar said that the Pakistan-based organization headed by Osama bin Laden hoped to use it as a launching pad for attacks in the Middle East.

Asked about the threat of an Iranian takeover of Iraq, which Bush has frequently cited as a possible outcome if U.S forces withdraw, Fingar said "it will be difficult for Iran to hold Iraq in its sway." While many Iraqi Shiites have close ties with Iran, he said, they have very different views about governance and religion.