3 YEARS LATER, STILL NO PROGRESS

The latest NIE report on Iraq is glum but what's worse is that the assessment hasn't changed much in 3 years. From the WaPo:

The result, they said, is that the new estimate -- which describes an Iraq engulfed by numerous bloody wars -- is strikingly similar to a still-classified assessment written in late 2004 and widely distributed among President Bush's top advisers.

That assessment predicted that over a period of 12 to 18 months, there would be "at best, tenuous stability, at worst a slide into civil war" in Iraq, said Paul R. Pillar, a Middle East scholar and veteran intelligence officer who was one of the report's principal authors.

"If you could compare the 2004 and 2007 estimates, it would be clear they are two installments of the same story, done the same way. The only difference is that the policy debate has become more intense in the intervening two years because the situation has become worse and worse," said Pillar, who left the intelligence community in 2005 and now teaches at Georgetown University.