US: In an internal Pentagon memo, US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld has offered an unusually candid and bleak assessment of America's progress in the war on terror and suggested that US policy was not effective in preventing the emergence of a new generation of global terrorists.
The leaked memo, dated October 16th and published yesterday in USA Today, reveals previously unspoken doubts within the Bush administration about the war so far, and stands in sharp contrast to recent upbeat assessments by top officials.
Mr Rumsfeld admitted that the US had no "metrics" for knowing if it was winning or losing the global war on terror, and conceded that while the war in Afghanistan and Iraq could be won "one way or another", the US-led coalition was in for a "long, hard slog".
"We are having mixed results with al-Qaeda" and "a great many remain at large", wrote Mr Rumsfeld, referring to the failure of the US to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, his top aide Ayman al-Zawahiri and other leaders.
The memo was written just a week after Bush administration officials fanned out across the country to emphasise its military and intelligence successes and to counter a spate of bad news in the media.
US President George Bush said that the US had al-Qaeda "on the run" and that "good progress in Iraq" was obscured by the "filter" of the news media.
Mr Rumsfeld noted in the memo that the Department of Defence was geared to fight big armies and that it was not possible to change it fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror.
His impression was that "we have not yet made truly bold moves" and he suggested a new US institution to focus government departments and agencies on the key problem overseas. A similar grouping was made domestically after 9/11 when the administration created the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr Rumsfeld wrote that the US "has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis" but has made "somewhat slower progress" tracking down top Taliban leaders.
In an evident reference to growing anti-Americanism around the world, he asked: "Is our current situation such that 'the harder we work, the behinder we get?'"
The Defence Secretary also acknowledged that "we are just getting started" in combating Ansar al-Islam, the group linked to al-Qaeda that was based in an enclave of Kurdish-controlled Iraq before the war.
Mr Rumsfeld also suggested the US was not putting enough effort into long-rage planning and might need to do more to "stop the next generation of terrorists". "The cost-benefit ratio is against us!" he said. "Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."
A Pentagon spokesman said the memo was meant to challenge top commanders to "look beyond the tree-tops" to long-range needs.
No criticism was made of the leak, suggesting it was approved to promote Mr Rumsfeld's efforts to effect fundamental long-term changes at the Pentagon.
Senator Joseph Biden, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saw the memo however as evidence of "a little self-doubt" setting in at the Pentagon and suggested that Mr Rumsfeld was having "a bit of an epiphany" over Iraq.
Democratic Senator Tom Daschle said the memo was an illustration of concern the Bush administration had "about the failure of their policies in Iraq so far".