WASHINGTON, December 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Revealing more about the bleak scene in Iraq and its gloomy future, a top US intelligence officer warned the situation in the war-torn country is deteriorating and is likely to get worse in the coming few months, according to a leading US newspaper.

The New York Times revealed Tuesday, December 7, a classified cable, sent last month by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Baghdad after a one year-tour of duty assessment in the chaos-marred country, painting a bleak picture of Iraq's politics, economics and security.

The cable cautioned that security in war-ravaged Iraq was likely to deteriorate unless the interim Iraqi government makes significant progress in asserting its authority and building up the economy, the US daily added.

“It's an honest assessment of this officer's opinion -- and it is a well respected officer by the way -- of conditions in Iraq at this time,” a US official told Agence France Presse (AFP), on condition of anonymity.

“It is a balanced picture, it talks about progress in some areas, and then challenges as well,” the official said.

The tone of the CIA report appeared much more pessimistic than public statements in recent days by Bush administration officials, claiming that the Iraqi general elections, slated late January, would offer better opportunities for establishing security and stability in the country.

Commenting on the NY Times report, US officials told Reuters that the CIA report emphasized that Iraq offered a mixed picture.

One official said the “general thrust” of the article appeared to be broadly on the mark.

“These things present a picture of Iraq that's mixed. There's good, there's less good and the point is to try to improve on those areas where the performance has been less than optimal,”' he said.

A senior US official insisted that the basic task of building Iraq civil and military services was being carried out.

“Where there are problems you try to fix them and that's where our focus is. But the overall trend in terms of building more robust Iraqi security forces and more robust government institutions that will be the foundation for a democratic Iraq are going in the right direction,”' he said.

Iraq has been hit by a series of bomb attacks and car blasts, leaving scores of Iraqis killed.

Some 134 US soldiers were killed in November, one less than the most deadly month yet of April this year, according to an AFP tally.

The US Defense Department said 1,000 US military personnel have been killed in action in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003.

The Bush administration, however, claimed that it is not trying to minimize the seriousness of the Iraqi insurgency (the US term of the Iraqi resistance).

The State Department said the “insurgent” attacks in Iraq, which have claimed the lives of scores of members of Iraq's fledgling security forces in recent days, are only one part of a complex situation in the country, the Voice of America reported.

“We've always been very clear-eyed and realistic about the challenges before us in Iraq,” the US State Department Deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.

“Nobody's trying to sugar-coat anything. We recognize that we've got a tenacious and difficult insurgency to deal with. I think we have a good understanding of what we're confronting. We have, together with the Iraqi interim government, a plan for dealing with it.”

The spokesman said assessments like the reported CIA document are important to having a complete understanding of what is going on in Iraq, but said they are only part of a very nuanced and complicated picture of the country.

The spokesman alleged that the US strategy in Iraq has been reflected in recent weeks in cities like Najaf and Fallujah, where the US-led coalition and Iraqi government troops have used military force and political pressure to take the fight to the enemy.

The successive air strikes have caused huge damage in the western Baghdad city, with dead bodies littering the streets.