The Little Brown Reader

The memorandum was sent to his civilian deputies and top military officers, calling for fresh thinking in US counter-terrorist strategy. Its sober tone is a marked contrast to the upbeat assessments offered to the public by President Bush and his administration officials.

The memo was published yesterday by the USA Today newspaper, and a Pentagon official confirmed its authenticity to the Guardian, describing it as one of Mr Rumsfeld's "snowflakes" (Pentagon slang for the daily blizzard of notes he sends to his subordinates).

Yesterday's memo is addressed to Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, his chief policy adviser, Doug Feith, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Dick Myers, and his deputy, General Pete Pace, and it runs through a scorecard of US military engagements to date.

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The Rumsfeld memo was leaked a few days after Mr Wolfowitz told supporters "we are winning" in Iraq. On Monday Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, told a Republican fund-raising meeting: "We are rolling back the terrorist threat at the very heart of its power, in the Middle East."