The central issue

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In the plethora of debates, policy positions and analyses that have accompanied the US presidential campaign Iraq has inevitably emerged as a keystone issue. It is Iraq that has become the Achilles' heel of the Bush campaign. Indeed, America's two leading heavyweight newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post, have already reversed their earlier positions on Iraq.

Public opinion -- both inside the US and around the world -- is well acquainted with the ugliness of the Iraq campaign and the errors in Iraq's post-war administration. They are errors that the politicians must admit. They need to stop justifying their actions and do something about construction and reform.

Hearts and minds are not won with guns. Peacekeeping involves a massive deployment of human resources. The US needs more than reservists and private contractors to maintain law and order in Iraq. Washington has consistently underestimated the Iraqi resistance despite a US intelligence report, dated January 2003, warning of public wrath against the "liberators" unless the US proved able to rehabilitate services quickly and transfer power to Iraqi politicians.

The post-war period clearly shows that US intelligence has yet to comprehend what is happening in Iraq. Occupation forces have shown themselves incapable of battling their invisible enemies in the south and in the Sunni Triangle while the resistance, particularly that mounted by Al-Mahdi Army, has been politically effective in ways the occupiers failed to predict.

Whatever the outcome of the US elections something has to be done about Iraq. Sovereignty must be returned to the Iraqis and the country's territorial integrity secured. Ensuring this happens is the only way to improve the situation in the Middle East and pave the way towards addressing the region's other burning issues -- the Arab-Israeli conflict and human and economic development.