(Recasts, adds quotes, reaction) By David Morgan WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence concluded that key elements of Iraq's violence rose to the level of "civil war" in a report on Friday that the White House said justified a troop increase and Democrats seized on as proof of a failed strategy. Escalating violence between Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'ites met the definition for a civil war, but the politically charged term did not describe all the chaos in Iraq, the report said. Reflecting the consensus views of Washington's intelligence community, the report also suggested that President George W. Bush's strategy for controlling Iraqi violence must show progress within 12-18 months or risk further deterioration. Bush plans to send another 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq to quell violence, especially in Baghdad, as part of a joint operation with a more prominent Iraqi security force. But the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) said Iraqi security forces, particularly the Iraqi police, will be hard-pressed to undertake security responsibilities or operate independently against Shi'ite militias. Even if violence is reduced, the NIE warned, Iraqi leaders will still have a very difficult time achieving sustained political reconciliation by the middle of 2008. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat and 2008 presidential contender, called the report "a devastating repudiation of the president's new tactics in Iraq" and said it showed the "dire need for a political settlement." SHOWDOWN The Iraq war, which the Bush administration justified on faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, cost the president's Republicans control of Congress in November's elections. The now Democratic-controlled Senate is poised for a showdown over a bipartisan proposal objecting to Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq. White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley called the NIE "a fair statement of the challenge we face in Iraq" and said the intelligence was driving policy, not vice versa. He said the NIE "explains why the president concluded that a new approach, a new strategy was required, explains a number of the elements of that strategy, and generally supports it." An unclassified version of the NIE's key judgments said the term civil war "accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence and population displacements." But it said attacks on U.S. troops by al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents, violence between rival Shi'ite factions and widespread violent criminal activity make Iraq's overall crisis more complicated than a civil conflict. The administration has avoided calling bloody conditions in Iraq a civil war, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected the term as an oversimplification. "It's a bumper sticker answer to what's going on in Iraq," said Gates, a former director of central intelligence, said at a news conference. The 90-page report said unless efforts to reverse the violence "show measurable progress" in the coming 12 to 18 months "we assess that the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate." But it said a withdrawal of U.S. forces over the next year and a half would lead to massive civilian casualties, possible intervention by Iraq's neighbors including Turkey and undermine the Iraqi government as a nonsectarian institution. The report said Iran's "lethal support" for selected Iraqi Shi'ite militants was intensifying the conflict. But it said outside actors including Syria were not likely to drive Iraq's sectarian violence, which has already achieved a "self-sustaining character." But things could get worse. Mass sectarian killings, assassinations of major religious and political figures and a complete Sunni withdrawal from the government would "convulse severely Iraq's security environment," the report said. (Additional reporting by Steve Holland)
