12 September Washington Post - Pentagon Weighing Report On Anbar by Ann Scott Tyson.

The Pentagon is taking "very seriously" a classified intelligence report concluding that the U.S. military has fought to a stalemate in Iraq's western Anbar province as political conditions also worsen in the "epicenter" of the country's Sunni insurgency, a senior defense official said yesterday.

In congressional testimony on security in Iraq, Pentagon officials also said the rise of "ethno-sectarian violence" has laid the conditions for civil war, aborting plans by U.S. commanders to begin withdrawing U.S. troops. Gaps in the capabilities of Iraqi security forces leave open the prospect that U.S. forces may have to stay in the country for as many as five or more years, they said.

Calling Anbar "a very hot zone on the battlefield," Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric S. Edelman said the secret report on the volatile, strategic province was gaining high-level attention at the Pentagon...