A ``devastating official assessment''

While Israel is on a rampage through Lebanon, Roger Payne points to the latest ``offical'' word on that other war:

The British ambassador to Iraq has returned home, but William Patey's last official confidential diplomatic telegram provides...``a "devastating official assessment of the prospects for a peaceful Iraq"... the pessimism reflected in the leaked memo "stands in stark contrast to the public rhetoric"

This leaked memo joins a parade of behind-the-scenes reports and cables about what is really going on in Iraq--nothing short of a complete breakdown of the society and a civil war spiraling out of control.

This should be blockbuster news because it reveals that the rosy public rhetoric President Bush likes to use on Iraq is contradicted internally within the occupation coalition. Will the mainstream media treat this news with any urgency? Not if they treat it like they have before, when similar information became availble.