U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday the Central Intelligence Agency was "just guessing" in a pessimistic report about the future of Iraq. The classified assessment prepared for Bush in July laid out possibilities ranging from a best-case scenario of establishing a feeble political, economic and security system in Iraq to the worst- case scenario of developments that could result in a civil war. "The CIA laid out several scenarios and said life could be lousy, life could be okay, life could be better, and they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like," Bush said in New York. The New York Times reported on the National Intelligence Estimate last week as Bush has sought to portray an Iraq on its way to becoming a stable, democratic state as the November 2 presidential election approaches. Bush made the remarks at a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi after his speech during the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. The CIA has repeatedly been under fire for drawing erroneous conclusions about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction programmes prior to the March 2003 invasion. --More 2249 Local Time 1949 GMT
