Senate asks Bush for intelligence update on Iraq

Washington, Aug 4: The today Senate asked the Bush administration for a new intelligence assessment of on Iraq, where US lawmakers and officials fear that worsening sectarian violence could lead to outright civil war.

In a voice vote, the Senate approved a Democrat-sponsored provision directing US intelligence chief John Negroponte to prepare by October. 1 a national intelligence estimate assessing Iraq's stability amid ethnic, religious and tribal divisions.

The measure, sponsored by Democratic Sen Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, was added as an amendment to a defense spending bill for fiscal year 2007.

A national intelligence estimate, or NIE, is a major report meant to convey to Congress and U.S. policymakers the intelligence community's most authoritative judgment on any chosen topic. The last NIE on Iraq was issued in 2004.

One of the most widely criticized NIEs in recent decades was the Bush administration's 2002 assessment of prewar Iraq.

The document said Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the United States and its allies. But no such weapons have been found in Iraq.

Also TOday, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence announced that its members approved findings and Conclusions on two sections of its five-part Phase 2 investigation of Iraq prewar intelligence.

The panel completed Phase 1 of its investigation in July 2004 with a scathing report that said grave intelligence errors led to US assertions of Iraqi WMD.

The new Phase 2 reports, which could be released in unclassified form as early as September, deal with prewar information supplied to the Bush administration by the Iraqi National Congress, and compare postwar and prewar findings on Iraq's WMD programs and links to terrorism.

The biggest segment of the Phase 2 investigation, which would examine whether Bush administration officials exaggerated intelligence on Iraq as they made their public case for war in 2002 and 2003, has been bogged down in partisan squabbling.

REUTERS