Reality sucks, so we must ignore it

So sayeth the beltway crowd. The Washington Post obtained a cable from the US ambassador in Iraq, detailing the deteriorating and frightening conditions in Iraq. Via Editor and Publisher, 'Wash Post' Obtains Shocking Memo from U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Details Increasing Danger and Hardship:

NEW YORK The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked "sensitive," that it says show 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."

As a footnote in one of the 23 sections, the embassy relates, "An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militiast are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals all over Iraq."

Ethnic cleansing. Women losing their rights. Charming.

The Bush administration has had the memo since June 6th, but that didn't stop them from staging Bush's little photo-op in Baghdad. Or from pretending that al-Zarqawi was more important than he actually was. It hasn't stopped them from marching out in public everyday and citing the "progress" occuring in Iraq. Everything, and I mean everything, is PR to them.

And yet this shocking report is getting very little play. I guess it interferes with their narrative that Bush is rebounding. Can't let a little reality get in the way of a good story.