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Top Analyst: Surge Hasn't Cut Into Iraqi Violence

The U.S. troop surge in Iraq has not significantly reduced violence there, according to Thomas Fingar, the nation's top intelligence analyst. While acknowledging that the surge has helped, Fingar said "reconciliation" remains out of reach.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Fingar said recent data has borne out the predictions made by the National Intelligence Council in February.

Fingar and his staff produced an estimate that concluded the security situation in Iraq was deteriorating, and that the country was mired in widening chaos.

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Democrat John Spratt asked Fingar about that estimate Wednesday, noting, "It doesn't leave much room for hope."

Spratt asked, "What do you do with the situation — if we need a political solution, how do we overcome the bleak assessment you've made of the government in power right now?"

Fingar's response: "Congressman, I wish I had the answer to this one."

"The surge that began a few months ago 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 and other intelligence officials were summoned to Capitol Hill to talk about global security threats. And lawmakers had plenty of questions about the state of al-Qaida. Among them: To what extent is the threat now coming from Osama bin Laden himself and other core al-Qaida leaders, versus so-called franchise groups that may be sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, but not actually connected to him.

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John Kringen, the CIA's top analyst, said, "I don't think we see it in the context of an either/or. We actually see the al-Qaida central [group] being resurgent in their role in planning operations.

"They seem to be fairly well-settled into the safe haven and the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan there. We see more training, we see more money and we see more communications. So we see that activity rising."

But the CIA is also watching self-starting, franchise groups — and they're also getting more active, Kringen says.

There may soon be a senior addition to the circle of people who closely track al-Qaida, as President Bush announced Donald Kerr as his pick to be the next deputy director of National Intelligence.

Kerr is currently the head of the National Reconnaissance Office, which builds spy satellites. If confirmed by the Senate, Kerr will take on a job that has been vacant for more than a year. A number of candidates for the job are known to have turned it down. And sources close to Kerr say it took some arm-twisting to get him to take the post.

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