For once a measured, careful commentary on this "leak" and the fuss afterwards by a British think tank author, who was a special adviser to the former Labour government:http://www.ippr.org/articles/56/8609...er-afghanistan

A "taster" from his last two paragraphs:
This suggests a total inability to see the conflict from the insurgency’s point of view. At the same time as Western leaders, looking to their domestic constituencies, are talking about accelerating the process of ‘transition’ to Afghan control, today’s report tells us that ‘the Taliban are deliberately hastening NATO’s withdrawal by reducing their attacks in some areas and then initiating a comprehensive hearts-and-minds campaign’. We shouldn’t ascribe too much strategic sophistication, and in particular too much strategic co-ordination, to what is undeniably a fragmented insurgency under a degree of pressure; but the trends identified in the report are plausible components of a deliberate strategic shift by the insurgency, in response to NATO’s own strategic shift towards ‘transition’. Dismissing them as ‘desperation’ is itself rather desperate.

Leaks are always damaging, but however difficult this is to handle in the short term, we must hope that UK officials and others use it as an opportunity to move towards a more honest and realistic debate about the Afghan campaign and its prospects of success, in public as well as private. Clearly, they are under no obligation to talk up our enemies, but complacency can be just as damaging as defeatism.