The National Intelligence Estimate’s updated judgments show that our
strategy has improved the security environment in Iraq, but that we
still face very tough challenges ahead. While the February NIE
concluded that conditions in Iraq were worsening, today’s key
judgments clearly show that the military’s counterinsurgency strategy,
fully operational since mid-summer, has begun to slow the rapidly
increasing violence and patterns of that violence we have been seeing
in Iraq. This change is a necessary precondition to the stability and
increased political reconciliation that we all seek.