Time to bring the troops home...

With all the Purple Finger Cheerleading and talk of "victory" in Iraq it's sobering to discover what's really happening.

The best post-election analysis that I've read comes from this article by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent (UK).

Those who expected our invasion of Iraq to result in a pro-Western democracy will be disappointed with Cockburn's conclusions.

According to Cockburn, "Iraq is disintegrating." The religious fundamentalists now have the upper hand. The secular and nationalist candidate backed by the U.S. and Britain was humiliatingly defeated.

This article is "must" reading. It has the kind of analysis you are not likely to find in our mainstream American media. Cockburn sums up his conclusions with this sentence: "The election marks the final shipwreck of American and British hopes of establishing a pro-Western secular democracy in a united Iraq." In the meantime, we're learning that the Interior Ministry, with their death squads, is borrowing a chapter from the Saddam Hussein legacy.

I would not want to be the person with the responsibility of communicating this information to President Bush.

Let's declare victory and bring our troops home.