I think this is a ruse. This thing reads like a diary entry at Daily Kos. Think Dan Rather.

Funny- that was my reaction, too (before I even looked at the thing)...

If it is a hoax, it would be ironic that this time, the hoaxers used an old-fashioned monospace font to avoid the problems of the faked Bush TANG memos... even though, as a modern document, this memo would be more much likely to have been written in Microsoft Word than on a typewriter.

That would be funny.

Interesting. Why would Khalilzad or his staff send a cable such as that? Is he trying to get all of the Embassy staff moved into the Green Zone?

And why is it called a "cable"? Presumably it was sent by email over an intranet.

Looks like Tony Snow has confirmed the authenticity of the cable.

By contrast, during an interview on CNN's Late Edition, host Wolf Blitzer challenged Snow's criticism of the war coverage by noting the June 6 cable, which he described as "very, very grim" and "a pretty damning indictment of the current situation." Blitzer said, "I know that many have complained that the news media is only focusing in on the negative, but here the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paints a pretty stark picture of what's going on right now." In response, Snow argued that the embassy's account was outdated. "Well, that's taken in mid-May," he said.

I too would like to know why it's called a "cable".

Because the embassy probably had to fire up the generator to send that, and they only had enough power for the telegraph. That, and it was presumeably encrypted, so even if it were sent by e-mail, it would probably be typed when received. Don't know if we actually store encryption/decryption codes on computers and let them do the work.

Good thing we encrypted it. Wouldn't want this sort of information getting out onto the Internet, you know.