Knight Ridder has learned that the Bush administration was warned early on of the possibility of a worsening insurgency or civil war.
A National Intelligence Estimate completed in October 2003 concluded that local conditions were driving the insurgency, not foreign jihadists as the administration maintained. This and other reports were received coolly by the administration according to former White House officials.
Robert Hutchings, chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2005 said that a steady stream of intelligence reports warned the administration that the insurgency was intensifying and expanding. But White House officials “simply weren’t ready to pay attention to analysis that didn’t conform to their own optimistic scenarios,” Hutchings said.