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 The consensus report by U.S. spy agencies contained a veiled warning: Any move to shift U.S. troops out of their role directly combating insurgents could squander the modest security gains secured by the troop surge.
"A change of mission ... would place security improvements at risk," the report concluded.
That conclusion, coming unanimously from the nation's 16 intelligence agencies, will likely help the administration and its ground commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, argue for patience from a skeptical Congress and public. Petraeus has overseen a U.S. troop buildup and a more aggressive counterinsurgency effort that Bush announced in January.
Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said intelligence assessments aren't meant as policy arguments, but the warning in the new National Intelligence Estimate, revealed Thursday, may be seen as just that.
"I don't mean that the timing of the release may not have something to do with a campaign for supporting the president's position," he said.
Colin Kahl, a former Pentagon analyst and now an assistant professor of national security studies at Georgetown University, said the intelligence community is aware that the timing of the new report
-- just nine months after the last intelligence estimate on Iraq -- looks political. It was dropped this week into the dead calm of an official Washington in the middle of summer vacation.
"I think those working on the NIE were well aware that it would be politically controversial, but I don't get the sense that this was done in the service of helping Petraeus or the administration," said Kahl. "I get the sense that some within the (intelligence community) thought it was unnecessary, and unprecedented, to do another Iraq NIE so close on the heels of the last one."
One senior intelligence official said, however, that the timing was intentional
-- designed to inform decisions to be made about Iraq strategy this summer and fall. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the issue more candidly.
Kahl said the report itself amounts to an "honest, somewhat grim, 'damned if we do, damned if we don't' assessment."
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 The warning against any change in Iraq tactics comes as Capitol Hill and the White House are showing fresh interest in the 2006 bipartisan Iraq Study Group report. That report recommended, among other things, that U.S. forces pull back from the front lines and focus on providing logistical support and training to Iraqi forces, along with conducting targeted counterterror operations.
In June, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to adopt the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations, with the goal to begin withdrawing combat troops not needed for force protection as early as March 2008. And on Thursday, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., called for starting troop withdrawals by Christmas.
Bush, who politely dismissed much of the Iraq Study Group's report last year, told an audience in Michigan on April 20 that he liked some of its ideas.
"Embedding troops and training troops makes sense for me. I like the idea of having our troops on the over-horizon presence, to be able to help bail out extreme situations. I really want to make sure that our special ops stays on the hunt for al-Qaida in Iraq," he said.
Pentagon officials say it will put severe strains on the military to sustain the additional 30,000 surge troops in Iraq beyond April 2008.
They are looking for ways to continue surge missions -- protecting the population while pursuing al-Qaida and militia extremists
-- while transferring more day-to-day responsibility for operations to Iraqi forces. A senior military official in Iraq said Thursday that process is already under way.
"It has never been an either-or proposition," said a second top military officer. "We have to both protect the population and develop the Iraqi security forces. It's a matter of how."
[Associated Press; by Pamela Hess]
Pamela Hess has covered national security in Washington since 1993.
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