By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A27
Intelligence analysts at the CIA and Pentagon warned the Bush administration that U.S. troops would face significant resistance from Iraqi irregular forces employing guerrilla tactics, but those views have not been adequately reflected in the administration's public predictions about how difficult a war might go, according to current and former intelligence officials.
CIA analysts "thought there was a good chance we would be forced to fight our way through everything," said one intelligence official who sat in on many briefings. "They were much more cautious about it being an easy situation."
With U.S. and British troops being forced to defend a more than 200-mile supply line from the Kuwaiti border to U.S. troops 50 miles from Baghdad and to fend off small-scale attacks by the Iraqi irregular forces, analysts at the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency are complaining that their reports would be softened as they moved to the White House. "The caveats would be dropped and the edges filed off," the intelligence official said.
"The intelligence we gathered before the war accurately reflected what the troops are seeing out there now," one military intelligence official said. "The question is whether the war planners and policymakers took adequate notice of it in preparing the plan." At least one pre-war intelligence analysis described potential threats of Iraqi irregular forces mining harbors, planting bombs and firing at troops while disguised in civilian clothes, according to one senior intelligence official.
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CIA and Pentagon analysts disagree about how long the fedayeen and other units, such as the 15,000 members of the Special Republican Guard and the Special Security Organization, a force of 10,000 that enforces Baath Party orders, would continue to fight.
CIA analysts believe these groups will fight to the end, whether Hussein is alive or not. "This is about surviving for them," said one former senior Iraqi analyst who still consults with the Pentagon. "A large percent of them acted like secret police and fear what the Americans would do with them."
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