An anonymous "senior official" in quotes? Why can't we hear his name? Is it because either: he never said it, he lied or isn't supposed to say it.
It is from:
As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates
“The British have basically been defeated in the south,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said recently in Baghdad. They are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as “surrounded like cowboys and Indians” by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain’s remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601401_pf.html