The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked "sensitive," that it says shows that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, "the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees."
This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, "the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government."
It's actually far worse than that, as the details published below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women's rights, and "ethnic cleansing."
A PDF copy of the cable shows that it was sent to the SecState in Washington, D.C. from "AMEmbassy Baghdad" on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad -- the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it.
The subject of the memo is: "Snapshots from the Office -- Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord."
This article then continues with a list of "the other troubling reports." Suggest readers use the link above to read the details. We have a President, and an Administration, that continues telling us how "well" things are going in Iraq, even though they have also (finally) admitted that that there is more to do and it is going to be hard.
If what is happening in Iraq today is their definition of "going well" I would hate to see what would be actually happening on the ground if things were "going bad."
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