Last year, about this time:

A cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials cited in a report by The New York Times.

The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said.

The cable warned of increased sectarian fighting and other violence unless the Iraqi government can boost the economy and better impose its authority, the Times cited the officials as saying.

They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq.

The report comes as a wave of insurgent attacks have killed more than 80 Iraqis since Friday, and as Iraq's Sunni Arab Muslims are demanding that national elections scheduled for Jan. 30 be postponed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that he "cannot imagine" how Iraq's elections can go forward next month amid the violence.

The CIA? You mean the "intel" agency who missed the fall of the Shah in Iran? The same one that missed the fall of the Soviet Union? And the reunification of Berlin. The one which assured GWB that the WMD argument was a "slam dunk", and then later claimed the administration had given bad intel. Yes, that CIA. I see they were right again about how things would go this year. Not to mention the two elections which have gone smoothly since then.

Hilariously, I see that CBS News also decided to cite Vladimir Putin as some kind of expert on building democracies!

So what's the "ground truth"? Who knows, but the BBC, not known for their conservative bias, found in a recent survey that:

• 72% of Iraqis thought things were going "very good" or "quite good" in their life these days
• 52% said things were "much/somewhat better" than last year (in comparison with 29% who said things were "much/somewhat worse")
• 64% expected things to be better, still next year (only 13% expected things to get worse)
• 46% thought things were better in Iraq (38% though things had gotten worse)
• An amazing 69% thought things would be even better next year in Iraq (17% worse)

You know, if we wanted bad intelligence or wrong answers, we could probably get those for free.