Harpers' Ken Silverstein gets results again. Letter today from Rep. Pelosi, Sen. Reid, Sen. Rockefeller and Rep. Reyes calls for the long-awaited NIE on Iraq before 21,000 more US troops get sent:

Dear Director Negroponte:

As you know, last July members of Congress requested an updated national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iraq. This request was subsequently supported by the full House and Senate in the Fiscal Year 2007 Department of Defense appropriations conference report and signed into law by the President (P.L. 109-289).

We were pleased that you directed the intelligence community to produce a new Iraq NIE. We also appreciate the other Iraq-related intelligence products and recent briefings and testimony you and your analysts have provided Congress. However, it now has been six months since we placed the request for the NIE and the community has yet to complete it.

More here. The last NIE on Iraq was produced -- incredibly -- in 2004 -- some 2,000 GI deaths ago. (The existence of an April 2006 NIE on terrorism was something I first reported in this August piece, which the NYT subsequently reported in greater detail). As CQ's Jeff Stein recently reported, the CIA has some 500 employees in Iraq. Yet incredibly, Walter Pincus reported today, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis told Senate Intelligence committee members yesterday that the few Iraq specialists they have have been continuously busy with other more immediate tasks.

Posted by Laura at January 24, 2007 05:26 PM