WASHINGTON, Sept 17: The latest US intelligence estimate predicting a bleak future for Iraq has stirred a bitter political debate in this country, with the opposition Democratic Party saying the report endorses its claim that President Bush's Iraq policy is a total failure.

The Bush administration, however, has played down the report saying that it was only an academic exercise done for the White House. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the intelligence assessment "states the obvious," and he dismissed sceptics of the Iraq policy as "pessimists and naysayers".

President Bush, at a campaign stop, also repeated his generally upbeat assessment of Iraq, claiming that "freedom is on the march." But his Democratic challenger John F. Kerry said the report showed that President Bush was living in a "fantasy world of spin" and was refusing to speak honestly about mounting casualties, indiscriminate killings and chaos in Iraq.

"Stability and security seem further and further away," he said. He said President Bush was not levelling with the American people about the situation, and had "ignored" assessments from his own intelligence officials who "have warned him for weeks that the mission in Iraq is in serious trouble."

The White House, which had planned a vigorous election-season in defence of its Iraq strategy next week, initially tried to ignore the report but was forced into the debate after the Democrats cited portions from the report to show that Mr. Bush's Iraq policy was a major failure.

Spokesman for the National Security Council, Scott McCormack, said the report was "more of an academic think piece, documenting and analyzing the possibilities, the variables that can affect the outcome of various scenarios, both in a positive way and a negative way.

The report, a national intelligence estimate prepared by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was "tenuous stability" and the worst case was civil war.