almost daily. In a February 2006 Zogby poll of American troops serving in Iraq, 72 per cent thought the us should pull out within a year, and of those 29 per cent thought they should pull out 'immediately'. Less than a quarter -- 23 per cent -- backed the official stance, reiterated by the president and most of the domestic establishment, that the us must 'stay the course'. Military reserves are now so depleted that the Pentagon has announced a waiver on criminal records for army recruits and is increasingly forced to rely on mercenaries bought in the marketplace. The political cover laboriously constructed for the invasion has not fared much better. A first round of elections for a puppet government was boycotted en bloc by the Sunni community. A Made-in- usa constitution had to be rammed through with a manipulated plebiscite. A second round of elections has led to quarrels between the different American clients, and accompanying parliamentary deadlocks. Vast sums spent on bribes to assorted figures and funding for favoured candidates have yielded scant rewards, with the humiliation of the stipendiaries of both the cia and the Pentagon, Iyad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi, at the polls. At the time of writing, the American viceroy is using a Kurdish president to oust a Shi'a premier who has become inconvenient. Popular cynicism about the 'Purple Revolution' is general, the credibility of the authorities in Baghdad all but invisible. Not that the liberation of Iraq is close at hand. The continuation