I've been reading the declassified summary of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq released today. It's titled Prospects for Iraq Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead and it's a pretty mixed bag. I really wish I could read the whole thing. The summary is only 9 pages and 5 of those are spent on explaining how it was produced. We're left with just over 3 pages of Key Judgments. It's really not enough to allow proper analysis or to form a knowledgeable opinion, but that's never been an obstacle for me before, so I'll just pop open a can of beer and jump right in. Here's the first paragraph:

Iraqi society’s growing polarization, the persistent weakness of the security forces and the state in general, and all sides’ ready recourse to violence are collectively driving an increase in communal and insurgent violence and political extremism. Unless efforts to reverse these conditions show measurable progress during the term of this Estimate, the coming 12 to 18 months, we assess that the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate at rates comparable to the latter part of 2006. If strengthened Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), more loyal to the government and supported by Coalition forces, are able to reduce levels of violence and establish more effective security for Iraq’s population, Iraqi leaders could have an opportunity to begin the process of political compromise necessary for longer term stability, political progress, and economic recovery.

The bolding of the first two sentences is in the original. What jumped out at me right away is the 12 to 18 month time-frame. That pretty much lets dubya off the hook, doesn't it? He'll use this to reinforce his current meme that The Surge plan needs to be given time to work, meanwhile he can let the clock run out on his presidency and drop this whole mess in the next president's lap. My problem with this is that it also gives him time to come up with some justification for shifting the focus (and the force) of this war onto Iran. The only parts of this paragraph that actually should be in bold are the words if and could in the last sentence. They most accurately reflect the confidence projected by this report in our ability to actually influence future events in Iraq. The report goes on to list bullet after bullet detailing just how badly Iraq is fucked up (and getting worse) before making the following point:

If Coalition forces were withdrawn rapidly during the term of this Estimate, we judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi Government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation.

That sentence seems tailor-made for the right-wing noise machine of bloggers, pundits and talk radio. You can bet your ass they will use it to berate the anti-war left and beat up on the anti-Surge Dems, even though none of the withdrawal plans that I've seen publicly aired have called for anything that could remotely be called "rapid" withdrawal. The report then lists three developments that could (their emphasis) help to reverse the negative trends:

Broader Sunni acceptance of the current political structure and federalism to begin to reduce one of the major sources of Iraq’s instability.

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Saddam and the Sunnis ran Iraq with an iron fist for decades and they did it in a mostly secular way. They are not about to turn it over to religious clerics, particularly from a different religious sect.

Significant concessions by Shia and Kurds to create space for Sunni acceptance of federalism.

Also not likely. After being on the receiving end of that Sunni repression for all those years, the Shia and Kurds are just not feeling much brotherly love for them. The death squads are working around the clock.

A bottom-up approach—deputizing, resourcing, and working more directly with neighborhood watch groups and establishing grievance committees—to help mend frayed relationships between tribal and religious groups, which have been mobilized into communal warfare over the past three years.

Wow. That sounds so liberal. It's touchy-feely, it-takes-a-village kind of thinking. Trouble is, it's hard to sell that shit at gunpoint. The parties involved have to want to cooperate with each other to even begin this kind of reconciliation. The report concludes with three possible scenarios for Iraq if (when) things don't all end in sweetness and light like dubya has planned:

Chaos Leading to Partition. With a rapid deterioration in the capacity of Iraq’s central government to function, security services and other aspects of sovereignty would collapse. Resulting widespread fighting could produce de facto partition, dividing Iraq into three mutually antagonistic parts. Collapse of this magnitude would generate fierce violence for at least several years, ranging well beyond the time frame of this Estimate, before settling into a partially stable end-state.

That doesn't sound too good, but I think this is where we've been headed from the moment we toppled Saddam's regime.

Emergence of a Shia Strongman. Instead of a disintegrating central government producing partition, a security implosion could lead Iraq’s potentially most powerful group, the Shia, to assert its latent strength.

Despite all the bullshit rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy, I think dubya and company secretly would love this option. Provided they could choose a Shia Strongman friendly to US oil company interests.

Anarchic Fragmentation of Power. The emergence of a checkered pattern of local control would present the greatest potential for instability, mixing extreme ethno-sectarian violence with debilitating intra-group clashes.

Ah yes, Anarchy. But isn't that where Iraq already is? Like I said, I would really like to read the full report. For me this summary is notable for things not mentioned at all. Things like oil and Israel and the expected results of the much-discussed Surge.