The Neocons constantly complain that the media fail to report all the news from Iraq. That's true but Tuesday is a prime case in point where news from Iraq is not reported and that news is an indicator that things are going badly wrong.
Because it involves five Brits of course you might not expect it to make the headlines, despite it being the top story on news stations here. Yet it failed to get any coverage at all in the CBS evening news while a couple of whales and a cicada showing in Chicago did. To their credit, ABC Evening News did report it and indicate some of its significance.
The case involves the abduction of a finance expert visiting an Iraqi ministry and four bodyguards. The exact details are either unclear or are being concealed to avoid endangering the hostages but here is the BBC report.
There are conflicting reports about exactly how Tuesday's abduction took place.
The street was sealed off at both ends and the kidnappers, in police camouflage uniforms, walked straight past guards at the finance ministry building on Palestine Street, the witnesses said.
A police source told the BBC that dozens of police vehicles were used in the operation.
The BBC's Paul Wood in Baghdad says that if such reports are true, it could point to the involvement of a renegade police unit, possibly special commandos.
While it has been possible in the past for criminals or militants to hire police uniforms and vehicles, he says, the scale of this operation suggests real police involvement.
It is well known that the Iraqi police are heavily infiltrated by militia groups, leading to split loyalties and corruption, our correspondent says.
BBC Report
The report from Sky News gave more details.
Witnesses told the Reuters news agency that the group was snatched by gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms.
The kidnappers, led by a man dressed as a police major, are thought to have entered a conference room shouting: "Where are the foreigners, where are the foreigners?"
A witness said the workers had been giving ministry personnel a lecture on electronic contracts. She said several of the lecturers' bodyguards had also been taken.
Sky News
This is concerning on a number of levels. The first is obviously that anyone proposing to give advice over the better administration of a future Iraq will be deterred from going there. Experience of decolonization shows that the best outcomes are where proper systems of governance are in place.
More importantly it shows that there is a well organised dissident group within the Iraqi Police forces and in its elite units at that. They also have access to good intelligence about potential targets as witnessed by their knowing that "foreigners" were in the building. Sky News believes that they are Shia in the police commando units loyal to the Shia elements within the government, the Finance Ministry itself is Shia controlled. In terms of negotiating a release, this is thought to be advantageous.
The situation is also strongly reminiscent of the situation in the "successful" southern provinces administered by the British, as described by Paul Rogers in the latest of his monthly briefings for the Oxford Research Group.
Moreover, an extensive insurgency has developed which has produced a degree of chaos and disorder across much of central Iraq that has exceeded most of the worst predictions of recent years. Even in the south of the country, the British forces are now starting to be withdrawn, with the admission that they are adding to the problems as a focus for opposition. As they withdraw from Basra, power is now in the hands of competing militias rather than central Iraqi government authority – the withdrawal is effectively a retreat in the face of failure, although this is not how it can be represented for public consumption in Britain.
Here then we see emerging the pattern that many have predicted, a fragmentation of the very agencies of government that are supposed to help unify the country.
We are getting to the point where our politicians will have to openly and quite coldly assess whether the presence of foreign forces is merely delaying the inevitable. The choice will boil down to whether leaving the competing militias to fight their civil war will cause fewer deaths and injuries overall if the foreign forces were to withdraw now or if we should wait for Bush to finally implement the Baker plan after the inevitable failure of the "surge". Even CBS News was honest enough to report an assessment that success of it is a long shot.