I fail to see why this should be politically inconvenient. Preventing the world's oil supply from falling into the hands of a deranged madman with a massive army is a perfectly good reason to go to war. That is the reason Bush I went to war against Iraq, and that is why the rest of the world, even the Arab world, was willing to sign on.

After the first Gulf war Saddam was pretty much in check; his military in a shambles, economically isolated, blockaded, surrounded by enemies, and routinely overflown, photographed and bombed by the US Air Force. There may have been good reasons for the US to invade Iraq again, but now the rest of the world didn't have as much of a stake or as much of a desire to participate. Bush II's reasons for going to war were to further US strategic goals and influence in the region. Invading other countries to further your strategic goals and influence is the textbook definition of aggression. Still, history has shown, when you get away with it, people tend to cut you some slack for it.

The immediate justification for the war, WMDs, potentially nullified the charge of aggression, but when it failed to hold up a whole series of other excusess were brought up to substitute for it: terrorist connections, removing a tyrant, bringing democracy to the region, stopping genocide, fighting Al-Quaeda, preventing sectarian violence, preventing civil war, keeping a general MidEast conflict from breaking out, and (my favorite): "we broke it, we bought it". All of these may very well be valid now, but none was a problem for the world until we showed up.

It appears now the best thing we can hope for is to extricate ourselves without a military embarassment and without the entire region suffering a meltdown or genocide. The oil will still be threatened (now by the Iranians) and our grandiose strategic ambitions for the region will be still be frustrated.

However, victory for the US is still possible. To meet our original goals, we must establish a pro-US government in Iraq, one that is prosperous, in control, capable of financing itself and providing us with reasonably priced oil, and willing to let us establish bases and ports there to keep our enemies in check and to help our friends. It will even have an unexpected benefit: Al-Quaeda will have to go somewhere else to set up shop. The questions we have to ask ourselves are, are we any closer to this than we were five years ago? And how much longer is it going to take the next US president to accomplish this, given the head start provided by the Bush administration.