NEW YORK, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush said Tuesday in New York that the CIA was "just guessing" when it warned of the danger of a civil war in Iraq.
The president was asked during a photo opportunity with the Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, why "the CIA's assessment of conditions in Iraq is so much at odds with the optimism that you and Prime Minister Allawi are expressing at the moment?"
Last week, it was reported that a National Intelligence Estimate -- a document representing the best combined assessment of U.S. intelligence -- had warned that the most favorable outcome for the near term in Iraq was a tenuous stability. The document -- prepared before the recent surge in violence, which brought the U.S. death toll to over 1,000 -- also warned that civil war was a very real possibility.
Bush told reporters that the CIA had "laid out several scenarios ... and they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."
"The Iraq citizens are defying the pessimistic predictions" and were headed fro free elections," he said.
