Though the latest NIE on Iraq was delivered to Congress on April Fools' Day, you'll probably never get to see any part of it. The Bush administration decided that the public has no need to know what intelligence agencies think about the state of a country the US invaded and occupied five years ago.

That's hardly unexpected. A few weeks back when the Pentagon delivered it's latest quarterly happy talk, "Measuring stability and security in Iraq" (PDF), it did so with minimum fanfare. Quarterly reports have to be published by law, NIEs do not. And just to make sure that everybody understands that there's no real need to publish this Iraqi NIE, the administration let it be known that it isn't really an NIE at all.

According to an administration official with knowledge of the intelligence process, this morning's intelligence document isn't itself a National Intelligence Estimate. "It's not a formal report," the official said, "it's more or less an assessment memo, an update to policy makers."

It's no surprise that the White House thinks public debate is best served by a misinformed citizenry. What's a little more remarkable, though, is that the WH has now sent out officials to describe the Iraqi NIE's contents to reporters - an NIE it insists on keeping secret. The NYT provides us with an official version of those contents. Treat it all with due skepticism.

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq cites significant security improvements and progress toward healing sectarian political rifts, but concludes that security remains fragile and terrorist groups remain capable of initiating large attacks, several American government officials said this week. The classified document provides a more upbeat analysis of conditions in Iraq than the last major assessment by United States spy agencies, last summer. It was completed this week, just days before the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is due in Washington to give lawmakers a progress report on the military strategy in Iraq. While the last assessment painted a grim picture of an Iraqi government paralyzed by sectarian strife, the new intelligence estimate cites slow but steady progress by Iraqi politicians on forging alliances between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, said the government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the document is classified.

Actually, the previous NIE from August 2007 was remarkably upbeat as well, citing slow but steady progress:

"There have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq's security situation since our last NIE on Iraq in January 2007."

If the anonymous government officials' assessment of the latest NIE is accurate, and that's a big if, then like the last estimate it accentuates the positive. In any case, it probably reveals little about Iraq that the public doesn't already know from news reports (again, much like the August 2007 NIE).

Several lawmakers familiar with its conclusions declined to provide specifics but said it contained little information beyond public accounts of recent events in Iraq. "The stuff that was positive, they emphasized. The negative, they stated, but deemphasized," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.)... "I was discouraged" by the assessment, Biden said. "I was discouraged by the last one, too."

This is what the WH wants the public to believe about an NIE it can't read:

"The N.I.E. update confirmed that the surge strategy the president announced in January of last year is working," said one senior administration official. "There’s more work to be done, but progress has obviously been made."

That ever elusive "progress in Iraq" the WH has been talking about since June 2003. We know it was making stuff up about progress in 2003, again in 2004, also in 2005, and in 2006, as well as in 2007. But how credible is the Bush administration in 2008?

By a remarkable coincidence, just yesterday the NYT published an account of Nouri al-Maliki's "planning" for last week's disastrous assault on Basra, an account based on named and unnamed American officials. The point of the exercise was to convey the idea that the Bush administration had virtually no idea what Maliki was going to do until two days in advance - and then only because Maliki invited General David Petraeus to a parlay on March 22 and told him his plans.

In short, by the administration's own account it can't be held accountable for last week's failure because it was caught almost completely unawares regarding the biggest Iraqi military operation since 2003. One way or another, the Bush administration's record of perspicacity in regards to Iraq is abysmal.

That's approximately how much we can trust the latest, secret NIE on Iraq.