with egg on their face and jam

and honey and treacle in their hair and on their hands, the Coalition of the Willing is trying to look as if it is not looking for a strategy to cut and run (whatever that means - I think it's got something to do with Alexander Downer - but the image of cutting what? and running back home I assume?) while trying to look as though it has not just shat in someone's kitchen and is trying to slink away without cleaning up its mess. I marched against the Invasion of Iraq several times in 2003 and I wrote umpteen letters to Tony Windsor my MP who was one of the few politicians to say this was a stupid idea - of invading Iraq that is. But once we were in the country blowing up buildings and bridges and communication facilities and killing fathers and breadwinners and women and babies and making thousands of people homeless my attitude changed - we had to stay to clean up the mess of destroyed infrastructure and shattered lives.
Now I don't know. I can't believe that people could manage an invasion so incompetently. Maybe they should do the decent thing and just tell the poor Iraqis, "We are sorry, we are useless, we are leaving because we are just making things worse. Sorry."