U.S. intelligence agencies predicted problems U.S. now facing in Iraq

United States intelligence analysts predicted, in two papers widely circulated before the 2003 Iraq invasion, that al-Qaida would see U.S. military action as an opportunity to increase its operations and that Iran would try to shape the post-Saddam Hussein era in Iraq.

The top analysts in the government had also said that establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a long and turbulent challenge.

Democrats said the documents, part of a Senate Intelligence committee investigation released Friday, make clear that the Bush administration was warned about the challenges it now faces as it tries to stabilize Iraq.

"Sadly, the administration's refusal to heed these dire warnings - and, worse, to plan for them - has led to tragic consequences for which our nation is paying a terrible price," said the Democratic Senate Intelligence chairman, Jay Rockefeller.

But some Republicans rejected the committee's work as flawed. The committee's top Republican, Senator Kit Bond, said the report's conclusions selectively highlight the intelligence agencies' findings that seem to be important now, distorting the picture of what was presented to policymakers.

He said the committee's work on the Iraq intelligence has become too embroiled in politics and partisanship to produce an accurate and meaningful report.

The 229-page document was approved by a vote of 10-5, with Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel joining with the Democrats to support its publication.

Asked about the report at his Thursday news conference, U.S. President George W. Bush stood by his decision to overthrow Hussein's government. He said he firmly believes the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq.

"Going into Iraq, we were warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn't happen," he said. "Obviously, as I made a decision ... I weighed the risks and rewards of any decision."

The investigation reviewed assessments from a number of agencies but focused on two January 2003 papers from the National Intelligence Council: Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq and Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq.

Those once-classified papers drew from expertise within a number of spy agencies and were distributed to scores of White House, national security, diplomatic and congressional officials, most of them identified in the Senate report.

The analysts found the following:

1. Establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge. They said that contributions could be made from 4 million Iraqi exiles and Iraq's impoverished, underemployed middle class. But they noted that opposition parties would need sustained economic, political and military support.

2. The al-Qaida network would see the invasion as a chance to accelerate its attacks, and the lines between al-Qaida and other terror groups could become blurred. In a weak spot in the analysis, one paper said that the risk of terror attacks would spike after the invasion and slow over the next three to five years. However, the State Department recently found that attacks last year alone rose sharply.

3. Domestic groups in Iraq's deeply divided society would become violent, unless stopped by the occupying force. Score settling would occur throughout Iraq between those associated with Saddam's regime and those who have suffered most under it, the analysts said.

4. Iraq's neighbors would jockey for influence and Iranian leaders would try to shape the post-Saddam era to demonstrate Tehran's importance in the region. The more Tehran did not feel threatened by U.S. actions, the analysts said, the better the chance that they could cooperate in the postwar period.

5. Postwar Iraq would face significant economic challenges, having few resources beyond oil. Analysts predicted that Iraq's large petroleum resources would make economic reconstruction easier, but they did not anticipate that continued fighting and sabotage would drag down oil production.

6. Military action to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would not cause other governments in the region to give up such programs.

As numerous investigations have found, the intelligence agencies of the United States and its allies were wrong about Iraq's supposed weapons programs.

Because Intelligence Committee members could not agree on clear conclusions about the intelligence, they saved their analyses for appendices attached to the report.

The most chilling and prescient warning from the intelligence community prior to the war was that the "American invasion would bring about instability in Iraq that would be exploited by Iran and al-Qaida," wrote four Democratic senators - Rockefeller, Ron Wyden, Evan Bayh and Sheldon Whitehouse.

Meanwhile, four Republican senators - Bond, John Warner, Orrin Hatch and Richard Burr - wrote that the report exaggerates the importance of the pre-invasion assessments. They said it was not based on intelligence information, but rather it was speculation based on informed analysis from experts in and out of government.

"They were no more authoritative than the many other educated opinions that were available in the same timeframe," the Republicans wrote.