WP: Spy Agencies Warned of Iraqi Resistance

[MountainLaurel]

U.S. intelligence agencies warned Bush administration policymakers before the war in Iraq that there would be significant armed opposition to a U.S.-led occupation, according to administration and congressional sources familiar with the reports.

Although general in nature, the sources said, the intelligence agencies' concerns about the degree of resistance U.S. forces would encounter have proved broadly accurate in the months since the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his inner circle.

Among the threats outlined in the intelligence agencies' reporting was that "Iraqis probably would resort to obstruction, resistance and armed opposition if they perceived attempts to keep them dependent on the U.S. and the West," one senior congressional aide said. The general tenor of the reports, according to a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence, was that the postwar period would be more "problematic" than the war to overthrow Hussein.

As U.S. military casualties mount and resistance forces wage a campaign of targeted bombings in Iraq, some administration officials have begun to fault the CIA and other intelligence agencies for being overly optimistic and failing to anticipate such widespread and sustained opposition to a U.S. occupation. But several administration and congressional sources interviewed for this article said the opposite occurred. They said senior policymakers at the White House, Pentagon and elsewhere received classified analyses before the war warning about the dangers of the postwar period.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45455-2003Sep8.html