US intelligence fears Iraq civil war by 2005
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2004 11:53:09 PM ]

WASHINGTON: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's bleak assessment about the situation in Iraq actually matches a pessimistic projection for Iraq's future in a classified US report.

According to a US intelligence estimate prepared for President George W Bush in late July, Iraq could slide towards a civil war at the end of 2005 in a worse case scenario. The best case scenario describes an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

But the Bush administration is putting on a brave public face, castigating the "hand- wringers" and insisting that the situation in Iraq is improving all the time.

So who is having LSD-laced Kool-Aid ?

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