Tomorrow's Newsweek Today

Hell to Pay:

...the insurgents, by most accounts, are winning. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged this privately to friends in recent weeks, NEWSWEEK has learned. The insurgents have effectively created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands, driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners out. 'Things are getting really bad,' a senior Iraqi official in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government told NEWSWEEK last week.

I wonder if we'll get any closer to the truth about what's going on in Iraq after the election on Tuesday. That's my barometer of how challenged a Kerry administration will be - dealing with the truth on the ground.