NBC Nightly News ignored senior intel official's assessment regarding violence in Iraq

On the July 11 edition of NBC's Nightly News, host Brian Williams reported that according to information obtained from a White House assessment, "there is unsatisfactory progress on 10 of the 18 so-called benchmarks laid out by Congress" for the Iraqi government but that "there is some good news, though, including a drop in those sectarian killings in Baghdad." Williams' report did not contain any other information regarding the administration's report, thus ignoring a more negative assessment on progress in Iraq from National Intelligence Council chairman Thomas Fingar, who is also the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis. According to prepared testimony presented to the House Armed Services committee on July 11, Fingar asserted that "even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation."

By contrast, in their respective articles on the Bush administration's report on Iraq benchmarks, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported on the differences between Fingar's assessment of the situation in Iraq and that of the White House. From the July 12 Times article:

An assessment of political progress provided to the House Armed Services Committee by Thomas Fingar, the deputy director for analysis at the National Intelligence Council, painted a much bleaker picture than the White House report, saying there were "few appreciable gains."

[...]

In contrast to the White House report, Mr. Fingar's assessment to the House committee was overtly critical. "The multiparty government of Nuri al-Maliki continues halting efforts to bridge the divisions and restore commitment to a unified country," it concluded, "and it has made limited progress on key legislation." But it added that "communal violence and scant common ground between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds continues to polarize politics," and Mr. Maliki's effort at reconciliation are "only at its initial stages."

From the July 12 Washington Post article:

Meanwhile, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, senior intelligence officials said there has been no meaningful positive change in Iraq since January, when a starkly pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate warned that even if security improved, violent sectarian divisions threatened to destroy the government.

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence and chief of the National Intelligence Council, which wrote the January estimate, said that assessment did not change. While the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made "halting efforts to bridge the divisions and restore commitment to a unified country ... it has made limited progress on key legislation," such as the oil revenue law and a range of power-sharing measures.

"Communal violence and scant common ground between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds continues to polarize politics," Fingar said yesterday. Even the majority-Shiite bloc that Maliki heads, he said, "does not present a unified front" and has continued to deteriorate in recent months. Meanwhile, the provision of essential services seen as crucial in building support for the government, including electricity and oil production, remains below prewar levels, he said. Some have declined over the past six months.

"The analysis that the community made in January ... appears to be borne out by events since then," he said. "That assessment focused on the imperative for reducing levels of violence in the country as a prerequisite for beginning to restore confidence among the competing, fractured body politic and the groups in the political system." While the increase in U.S. troops is "having an effect, it has not yet had a sufficient effect on the violence, in my judgment, to move the country to a place that the serious obstacles to reconciliation can be overcome," Fingar said.

"It will be difficult and time-consuming to bridge the political gulf when violence levels are reduced, and they have not yet been reduced significantly," he said, in what he called his "most optimistic projection."

From the July 11 edition of NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams:

WILLIAMS: Now to the war in Iraq and another charged meeting in Washington today between anxious Republicans and the White House. The Bush administration is showing no signs of a quick change of course here. More Republicans are now asking the White House to abandon the plan to wait for a September progress report before deciding what to do next.

Our Pentagon correspondent, Jim Miklaszewski, obtained details of the interim report on Iraq progress to be officially released later this week. It says there are -- there is unsatisfactory progress on 10 of the 18 so-called benchmarks laid out by Congress. The report says there is some good news, though, including a drop in those sectarian killings in Baghdad.

—B.A.