If there is any substance to this intelligence report:

Marines deny losing Iraq's biggest province

Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:10pm ET

By Peter Graff

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The commander of U.S. Marines in Iraq denied on Tuesday his troops had lost the vast province they patrol, after newspapers said his intelligence chief had written the grimmest report from the field since the war began.

Washington appears to have been jolted by the classified assessment by Colonel Peter Devlin, which describes the failure of the Marines to pacify Anbar province. The vast western desert makes up a third of the country and is considered the Sunni insurgency's heartland.

The Washington Post reported that officials who have seen the assessment said it described the province as lost. According to the paper, Devlin concluded that Iraq's Shi'ite-led government holds no sway in the province and the strongest political movement there is now the Iraq branch of al Qaeda.

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The idea that we have lost an entire province in Iraq to al Qaeda should disturb all of us here.