CIA warned administration of postwar guerrilla peril
By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Correspondent, 8/10/2003
boston.com
<<...the CIA in particular forewarned policymakers of some of the problems likely to arise, according to one intelligence official who asked not to be identified. The reports, for example, predicted that armed insurgents would attack coalition forces. One prewar report, he said, forecast that after the war ''things would get worse before they get better'' and that there would be a high likelihood of ''backsliding'' - progress followed by setbacks.
In the early days of the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's internal spy agency, warned that Ba'ath Party loyalists - many of whom escaped the major invasion - were showing signs of regrouping, said an intelligence official who asked not to be identified. ''We wrote in early April that we were picking up hints of guerrilla forces gearing up,'' the official said.
Since President Bush declared an end to major hostilities on May 1, at least 118 US soldiers have been killed, nearly half of them in ambushes, sniper and rocket attacks, and by improvised explosives. Nearly half of the 256 US soldiers who have died since the war began on March 20 have been killed since major hostilities ended...>> |
