John Brady Kiesling, the career diplomat who's February 03 [link|http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0227-13.htm|resignation letter] is a great read, contributed an interesting [link|http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040524&s=forum|idea] to The Nation's "How to get out of Iraq" forum: pick our best-bet Iraqi leader to lose to and let him drive us out...

In the end a fractured Iraq can be held together only by a man wrapped, like George Washington or Ho Chi Minh, in the legitimacy that derives from successful armed struggle. We should note the ease with which a scruffy young cleric united Sunnis and Shiites against the US presence. A victorious Secretary Rumsfeld could not impose Ahmad Chalabi. However, a retreating US military can designate Iraq's liberator. We must select the competent Iraqi patriot to whom we yield ground while bleeding his competitors. There will be casualties and disorder, no matter how brilliantly we orchestrate our withdrawal. But the overwhelming majority of Iraqis will rally around any man who claims to drive us out, and elections would validate his relatively bloodless victory.

There's more. He makes sense to me. Could we start from there? Of course, it's still dicey as hell, and also, as we (should) know, the devil is in the details.

Giovanni