WASHINGTON (AFP) - Marine intelligence officials have issued a report warning that any significant withdrawal of troops from the Iraqi city of Fallujah would strengthen the insurgency.
The assessment, distributed to senior Marine and Army officers in Iraq (news - web sites), also said that despite the heavy fighting with coalition forces, the insurgents would continue to increase in number, carrying out attacks and fomenting unrest in the area.
One officer said the seven-page classified report -- parts of which were provided to Thursday's edition of The New York Times -- was "brutally honest" and appears to contradict the US government's victorious account of the US-led fight against insurgents in Fallujah and other parts of northern Iraq.
Although the resistance crumbled in the face of the offensive, the report warned, "the enemy will be able to effectively defeat I MEF's ability to accomplish its primary objectives of developing an effective Iraqi security force and setting the conditions for successful Iraqi elections."
The pessimistic analysis was prepared by intelligence officers in the First Marine Expeditionary Force, or I MEF, last weekend as the offensive in Falluja was winding down.
Senior military officials in Iraq and Washington disputed the findings of the report, describing it as a subjective judgement of some Marines that did not reflect the views of all intelligence officials and commanders in Iraq.
"The assessment of the enemy is a worst-case assessment," Brigadier General John DeFreitas, the senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, said of the Marine report in a telephone interview with The New York Times.
The general insisted that there were no plans to withdraw forces from Fallujah.
"We have no intention of creating a vacuum and walking away from Fallujah," he told the broadsheet.
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