As many commentators supsected before a bullet was fired the US never had an exit strategy for leaving Iraq.

This was for the simple reason that they intended to stay.

The stationing of US troops in Saudi that so affronted Osama were to be withdrawn and stationed instead in Iraq.

The oil produced in the compliant, stable  and grateful Iraq would pay for the war, feed the guzzling, obese US economy and reward handsomely those US construction companies that had paid for contracts.

Those same US companies were granted permission to build a dozen or more US military bases, from which the US would attempt to extend its hegemony to Iran and Syria, the next two pariah states to get the shock and awe treatment. 

The US cheerfully allowed the country to be looted and pillaged, only defending the sacerd oil ministry while people like Rumsfeld blithely dismissed the looting as an understandable 'letting off of steam'.

The same 'letting off of steam' in Al Ghraib an elsewhere that Rumsfled also presided over was later to lead to systematic torture, rape and murder of detainees.

One year on the US position in Iraq is untenable.

They have lost.

So where does the US go from here?

Can something be snatched from the jaws of defeat?

It's all very well for people to go on carping about how right they were, and oh boy were they right, but what needs to happen next?

Firstly it is difficult to envisage any rapprochement with the ordinary Iraqis while Rumsfeld, the author of this bungled and botched illegal occupation, and sanctioner of systematic torture at the helm remains in office.

Editorials in Newspapers the world over have called for him to go.

He must go.

Similarly, Bush should go, he has presided over a catastrophic failure of intelligence, a failed war of his own making, an increase in global terrorism and the proliferation of the nuclear threat from North Korea.

A blank slate wiped clean of the  incompetent blind idealists that has bought the US to its knees may persuade ordinary Iraqis and the world at large that the US is willing to own up to its mistakes and make appropriate reparations.

Symbolic of the US intention to withdraw its troops and lick its self inflicted wounds is the reduction of the US embassy in Baghdad.

Currently it is set to become the largest US embassy in the world, and its size gives lie to the fact that the US really intends to pull out and not retain its troops there indefinitely.

If there is just one US troop left in Iraq following elections, whatever eventual government that will be in power at the time will be percieved as a US puppet.

Meanwhile the rebuilding of Iraq must be internationalised.

Instead of contracts going to sycophantic cronies, it must go to those companies that are best suited for the job, even if they are French and German, and the bidding process must me fair and transparent.

Already Bremer has been rendered redundant while the UN emissary Brahimi is the only chance the US has of cobbling together a plan for government post June.

Any transition must now be handled by the UN, Washington is no longer in any position to assert any moral, political or logistical legitimacy whatever in Iraq.

If Brahimi is able to succesfully assemble a post June government, the US must hand over to it control of Iraq's oil revenues, economic reconstruction projects, the police and the courts.

The US must maintain an armed presence until invited to leave, but there must be a commitment to abandoning the criminal practice of sub-contracting security to ambitious war-lords and Saddams Baath party cronies that now control areas such as Falluja.

This will require even more troops than are there currently in the short term, troops that should have been there from the start as I and many others that Rumsfeld igniored.

And those sent must be trained properly this time, for the task that they have been set.

There is one more unpalatable step that needs to be taken.

Just as in the cold war,the US needs to develop allies to give the transition in Iraq legitimacy. This colonial misadventure has exposed the simple fact that the US cannot take on Syria and Iran if it cannot secure Iraq.

The US allied with China on many occasions to combat Soviet expansionism during the cold war.

It needs to bring in Syria and Iran as commited partners in building the new Iraq, to enlist their aid through inclusion rather than exclusion to stabilise Iraq and to combat terrorist organisations such as Al'Qaeda.

This in itself will ease the way to dialogue over concerns about Irans nuclear program and Syrias support for US percieved terrorists.

Keep your enemies close.

How is this all to be achieved?

It is unlikely that Bush will fall on his own sword, he lacks the spine to admit when he has been so terribly wrong, exemplified by his refusal to sack Rumsfeld while US troop continue to die, re-election is more important to Bush than having the backbone to stand up and say I was wrong, let's get someone that knows what they are doing to try and sort it out.

Bush needs to call a wold summit, to which the major players, the Security Council, Saudi, Jordan, Iran, Syria, Egypt, the UN and others must be invited.

Bush must apologise for the appalling errors and botched job that sums up the Iraqi adventure, propose the changes outlined earlier, confer authority to the UN and promsie reparations for the illegal occupation, torture, rape and murder of innocent detainees.

Only then can the US walk away with any semblence of dignity.

Only then can the US begin the reconstruction work needed to repair it's damaged and tarnished reputation, sacrificed on the altar of greed, blind idealism and pitiful ignorance.

yechydda,