[Phil the anorak]

I don't know about an admission of failure other than failing to give any thought to the post war situation and overestimating the amount of happiness from the people of a muslim country to western democratic countries invading, sorry liberating them.

The crucial thing in the actual war was that there was no major full on battle to destroy their army which just melted away in front of the coalition assault in the main making it easy for a rapid transition to guerilla type warfare which is now going on.

It smacks of desperation however in seeking to extricate the troops from an increasingly hostile and complicated situation.