"I think it has been a remarkable success story to date when you look at what has been accomplished overall and I think the president deserves credit for it."

- Dick Cheney offers his assessment of US policy in Iraq in autumn, 2004.

Statements like this one may have helped George W. Bush to win the 2004 American election (along with those "special" Diebold machines, a very Bush-friendly Ohio attorney general, and scaring the living daylights out of Americans with exaggerated tales of terror), but in the end, they have not helped the Bush administration to convince the public that we are winning the fight for Iraq.

To date, the Bush administration's war has been a failure, so much so that it is now being said, by some, that the U.S. may be resorting to the act of deliberately initiating civil war in Iraq in order to achieve its political goals.

Here's the conundrum: A powerful resistance front in Iraq, including the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) and the Sadrists, will refuse any kind of dialogue with Iraq's new Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari unless there's a definite timetable for the complete withdrawal of the occupation forces. Back in America, the public is screaming for a timetable for a pull-out of U.S. troops, and Republicans like Walter Jones of North Carolina are making public appeals in Congress for something concrete - a date for pull-out; an inkling about an exit strategy - from the Bush administration.

Very few people really seem to want the U.S. troops to be where they are today - except the neocons and the Bush administration, who sent the troops there on the wings of the most dreadful lie ever told to America.

In March, 2004, while President Bush was preparing to return to the UN for the proposal of a new resolution, he had said:

"Al-Qaida wants us out of Iraq because al-Qaida wants to use Iraq as an example of defeating freedom and democracy." -(LINK)

We know this is not exactly the truth. It wasn't only Al-Qaida. A healthy number of everyday Iraqis (and the officials who represent them in the new Iraqi National Assembly) would like the U.S. to leave.

Before the public lowers the boom on Bush - seeking to impeach him for the disaster he created when he misled the nation - his administration must find the fastest way out.

The majority of the American public thinks Iraq is a mess. Consult any current public poll and you'll see for yourself.

Sunni Arabs and Kurds are virtually on the brink of civil war in northern Iraq at this time. The Kurds claim the city of Kirkuk as their own, and they want Kirkuk to be the capital of the Kurdish region, a goal that inspires ire in most Iraqis. Kirkuk has been described, even by U.S. officials, as a "powder keg." It also happens to sit on top of one of Iraq's richest oilfields. What the Kurds want most of all is to control Northern Oil - part of the Iraqi National Oil Co, in charge of the oilfields west of Kirkuk. It is apparent that Sunni Arabs will not settle peaceably with the Kurds on this issue.