Dead Iraqis don't count. "...one hundred years or a thousand years or ten thousand years" - just so long as it's not people with relatives among the voters back home getting killed.

Iraq has been devastated, far more so than the nightmare under Saddam. Maybe a million dead, millions driven into exile. Sectarian hatred ignited, women deprived of their rights, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world virtually annihilated.

But not to worry - soon we can pull back into our garrisons and sit there for ever while the genocide we set in progress continues under our tutelage.