The war underscores failure to listen to intelligence experts

For the record, leaking classified information to the media is against the law and is generally a bad idea. That said, I was not entirely unhappy to see The New York Times recently publish a secret assessment of the state of civil conflict in Iraq prepared by the U.S. Central Command's Intelligence Directorate.

The assessment was condensed into a Power Point slide, apparently part of a daily intelligence briefing for Oct. 18. The classified slide isn't really remarkable for what it says. The bottom line conclusion is that "Urban areas (are) experiencing 'ethnic cleansing' campaigns" and "violence is at (an) all-time high." On a bar scale with "peace" at one end and "chaos" at the other, it shows that CENTCOM assessed the situation as about 80 percent in the direction of the chaotic end of the scale, getting worse each week, and having steadily deteriorated since the bombing of the al-Askari mosque in February. None of this is any secret.

What is news about this disclosure is that CENTCOM intelligence knows just how bad the situation is and isn't afraid to say so. It's reassuring to know that our military intelligence professionals aren't driven by a political agenda and are willing to speak unwanted truth to those in power. Of course, these assessments are classified, but they are widely disseminated in the defense and national security establishment. And, as this incident well illustrates, they sometimes find their way into the hands of a wider audience.

In contrast, the administration's reaction is not at all reassuring. Last Thursday, presidential spokesman Tony Snow flatly denied that this chart showed Iraq devolving into chaos, even though that is precisely what it does show. The president continues to assert that "we are absolutely winning," even as retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor describes our forces there as "islands of impotence in a sea of violence." Mr. Snow's most remarkable assertion was that the president believes "we have not lost a single combat engagement." A few days before I left Iraq, a roadside bomb detonated on one of my unit's convoys enroute to Hillah. Three soldiers died, and one was seriously wounded. No one even saw — let alone fired upon — the insurgents who set or triggered that device. We most assuredly were on the losing end of that combat engagement, and there have been hundreds just like it.

If anything, the leak of CENTCOM's intelligence assessment and the administration's reaction demonstrates that the president and his advisers view intelligence as useful only when it provides support for policies that have already been decided upon. Intelligence that suggests anything else is either dismissed or, as in this case, it simply fails to register.

Historians often conclude that this or that military misadventure was caused by a failure of intelligence. When the history of the war in Iraq is written, it will not be explained that way. Iraq will be the lesson of what happens when leaders refuse to listen to their intelligence professionals.

Col. Thomas D. Farrell (retired) served as an Army intelligence officer in Iraq from May 2005 to June 2006. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.