"More than a year ago, a classified CIA paper assessment reported that Iraq had become a venue where a new wave of Islamic militants, many of them from outside Iraq, not only could be indoctrinated in jihad but could practice and perfect urban-warfare skills under live-fire conditions, in some cases presumably before returning to their home countries to carry out planned terror attacks. Two counterterrorism sources said there is no reason to believe CIA analysts have changed their pessimistic assessment since the paper was produced.

"In a series of closed-door briefings earlier this summer on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency painted what people familiar with the sessions described as an extremely gloomy assessment of the situation in Iraq; in the briefings, according to the sources, DIA officials described a situation in which insurgent groups are continuing to thrive and grow, increasingly influential sectarian militias are stoking intercommunal violence and the elected Iraqi government is showing itself, at least at the moment, incapable of curbing the violence."

Arf