The Daily Background

As rumored earlier, the New York Times will have a front-page article tomorrow about a 7-page secret report compiled by the US government. The report, which apparently centers around the strength and fundraising abilities of the insurgency, indicates that “$70 million to $200 million a year” are gathered by insurgents and terrorists (other estimates put the figure at much higher).

More specifically, “$25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry,” with the help of corrupt officials. Kind of a wide range, 25-100 million, but whatever. A further estimate of more than 30 million dollars is believed to come from kidnapping ransoms. The Times continues:

The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.

“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”

As I noted earlier, the report seems to be quite vague. In fact, the same is noted by some experts, as the NYT writes:

“They’re just guessing,” said W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who now runs a security and intelligence consultancy. “They really have no idea.” He added, “They’ve been very unsuccessful in penetrating these organizations.” He said he was equally skeptical about the report’s assertion that the insurgent and militant groups may have surpluses to finance terrorism outside Iraq. “That’s another guess,” he said.

“A judgment like that, coming from an N.S.C.-generated document,” he said, is not an analytical assessment as much as it is a political statement to support the administration’s contention that Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. “It’s a statement put in there to support a policy judgment,” he said.

As David Kurtz over at Talking Points Memo notes, the report does not seem to differentiate between what funding is terrorist, and what is merely insurgent. This would seem to be quite a flaw. Writes Kurtz: “The overwhelming impression I’m left with from the piece is that more than three and half years after ostensibly seizing control of Iraq, the U.S. government is still largely ignorant of the armed groups arrayed against its efforts there.”

It’s also possible that the report was leaked to the NYT by the Administration itself, because they note that the report “was made available to The Times by American officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the challenges the United States faces in Iraq.” It almost sounds like somebody within the Administration was trying to push them this report as proof that they were learning important new info about the insurgency (when in reality it seems remarkably vague, and by some Iraqi estimates– low-balling figures).

Filed under: Iraq Related, Z-TDB Blog