Intelligence analysts say they felt “bullied” by senior officials at the US military’s Central Command who demanded significant alterations to their reports on airstrikes against the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, says a report.

Senior CENTCOM intelligence officials who reviewed the critical reports on whether the US airstrikes were damaging Daesh often sent them back to the analysts and ordered them to write new versions, The Daily Beast has learned.

In some instances, the analysts were urged to manipulate intelligence and state that taking out Daesh leaders would diminish the group’s ability to launch attacks and lead to its eventual collapse, according to two officials familiar with a complaint by 50 analysts.

Many analysts, however, did not believe that killing senior Daesh operatives would have an enduring effect on the terrorist group’s overall operations.

“There was the reality on the ground but it was not as rosy as [CENTCOM leadership] wanted it to be,” a defense official told The Daily Beast. “The challenge was assessing whether the glass was half empty, not half full.”

The analysts also complained that the verbal and written demands by CENTCOM higher-ups created an environment in which they had to self-censor their reports and reach conclusions favored by their bosses, two separate sources said.

In some cases, the military brass even altered the critical reports in order to make them fall in line with the Obama administration’s official narrative that the so-called anti-ISIL campaign was making progress and would end with the group’s destruction.

CENTCOM Commander Army Gen. Lloyd Austin set off a firestorm Wednesday when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that after spending at least $43 million over 10 months, the US military had managed to train only “four or five” militants purportedly to battle Daesh in Syria.

The testimony drew withering bipartisan criticism from lawmakers who called the Pentagon’s program “a joke” and “an abject failure.”

A CENTCOM spokesman confirmed on Friday that only 9 US-trained militants were active in Syria and the rest have either deserted the program or fled the country.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said in a report on Sunday that a new batch of 75 US-trained militants crossed into northern Syria from Turkey over the past few days in a convoy of a dozen cars with light weapons and ammunition.

The $500 million “train-and-equip” program, conducted by US Special Forces in Turkey and Jordan, initially aimed at producing about 5,400 allied militants a year as a proxy ground force in Syria.

With the program in disarray, the Obama administration is considering a major overhaul of its strategy in Syria, looking for alternatives to prevent the program from total collapse, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.