Hole. Digging.

Isolated Bush faces rebellion over Iraq | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited: "Tony Blair yesterday welcomed the decision to send more troops to Iraq, saying it 'makes sense', but reaction otherwise was overwhelmingly negative."

Ian Bruce in the Herald is always worth reading on military and foreign political stories: Ignominious retreat only move left if surge fails

"America's most experienced military commanders predicted before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that the conquest and subsequent pacification of the country would take up to 500,000 troops.

George W Bush and his civilian neo-con advisers dismissed that professional advice in favour of a shock-and-awe strategy which substituted firepower and technology for boots on the ground.

Almost four years and 3000 dead later, the wheel has come full circle. The White House's last-gasp gamble to bring some semblance of security to a country already hopelessly enmeshed in sectarian civil war is to be 21,000 more US boots on the ground.

It is too little, too late. It is also military madness.

By committing more of its soldiers to action in the streets, slums and souks of Baghdad, America risks involving them in a street-fighting meat-grinder in which their hi-tech advantages are nullified and the chances of killing civilians by accident increase exponentially.

It also risks direct confrontation with the Mehdi Army of renegade cleric-cum-political fixer Moqtada al Sadr and a wider war which could spread south to engulf British forces in and around the southern province of Basra."