There is a stark contrast between these two positions. I want to address this but, because I will be expressing a highly controversial view here on Dkos, I must make clear my own position.

When I began writing on Dkos three years ago, I did so because I wanted to share as a UK citizen my disgust with our support in this country of the invasion of Iraq. I found amongst you, whom I can now call my fellow Kossacks, an intelligent and humane community that expressed powerfully and eloquently the outrage that so gripped me in those days of the first period of Bush's appalling administration and Blair's sycophantic naivety.

My views haven't changed. If I had the power I would pull all our troops out of Iraq and I would pull them out now.

I don't have that power. As a community here we don't have that power. As has become increasingly clear, because of a mixture of internal and external politics and constitutional restraints and because of an adamant administration and because of conflicted opinions within the hearts of the American people themselves, the Democratic Party in Congress does not have that power.

Let me take one or two other paragraphs from the interview with Hillary Clinton:

In outlining how she would handle Iraq as commander in chief, Mrs. Clinton articulated a more nuanced position than the one she has provided at her campaign events, where she has backed the goal of "bringing the troops home."

She said in the interview that there were "remaining vital national security interests in Iraq" that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.

The United States' security would be undermined if parts of Iraq turned into a failed state "that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda," she said. "It is right in the heart of the oil region," she said. "It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel's interests."

Whilst our community has been buried deep in argument about the legitimacy or otherwise of her handling of the issue of the "morality" of homosexuality an equally important message has been clearly and severely delivered to us. The United States does not have the intention of complete withdrawal from Iraq and this determination spans the political divides of the two main parties.

She is not alone.  Barack Obama has said that, if elected president, he might keep a small number of troops in Iraq. The Democratic resolution today also calls for "a limited number" of troops to stay in Iraq to protect the American Embassy and other personnel, train and equip Iraqi forces, and conduct "targeted counterterrorism operations."  This is what the permanent bases, or as euphemistically described as "enduring bases", are all about.

This diary is not about Hillary Clinton, nor Barack Obama, nor is it about the honesty of her position. I admit that if I had a personal vote in the matter, I would be a reluctant supporter of her. I dislike the dynasty element about her candidature and I feel uneasy about the political integrity of the Clintons, although an admirer of what Bill Clinton achieved on many issues. Yet I do not doubt the political instincts that she, and those around her, possess.  This political instinct is telling her campaign, and she is telling us, that the United Sates is not going to leave Iraq.

I wanted to approach this discussion by looking, step by step, at what the British strategy was in the south of Iraq. Through ePluribus Media, through here and through Juan Cole's courtesy in giving me a guest editor spot on Informed Comment, I have tried to rectify some of the misunderstanding surrounding the British announcement of limited troop withdrawals. I wanted to develop a series of detailed diaries that would identify that what was being done now by the UK was the precursor of both the long-term strategy and, importantly, the politics over the next two years in the whole of Iraq and in the United States. The first of these diaries, although rescued, drew hardly any comment.

Well, I don't need to continue this painstaking work of carefully constructed and carefully ignored arguments and alerts. In one interview, Hillary Clinton has taken us straight to the conclusion. My only regret is that she, and I, have not developed the arguments and demonstrated the inevitability of the end position.

Let us be clear what this conclusion says. In the absence of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, the United States and its allies are committed to a policy of retaining its bases in Iraq and fulfilling the Middle East policies first outlined by The Project for the New American Century

 I will discuss in a moment why Hillary Clinton has been prepared to so boldly make her statement, that essentially is telling Democrats - and us - to get real in our politics, without leading us gently through the arguments. Before doing so, however, I want to write one other conclusion that follows from the first would need far more space than I have to explain its logical inevitability on here. This is:

The strategy currently being adopted by the Pentagon and Bush administration is right in principle, if not in execution, once the Clinton conclusion is seen as inevitable

Making that statement is not to support it.  It is merely the logic of what follows from what is being proved right now on the floor of Congress. If we cannot get out of Iraq now, then consequences follow and you either bury your head in the Iraq sands or you face up to them and deal with them.

The strategy that is being followed needs to spelled out in equally uncompromising terms. It is one that 1- will remove the most threatening of the insurgents 2- will allow the sectarian factions to exhaust themselves in their bloodletting violence and death until some sort of co-existence is all that is left 3- will support a ruthless central government and creates a dependency on the continued presence of United States and allied military, contractors and mercenary security forces. It is this conclusion that is foreseen by the Iraq correspondent today speaking today on Sky News as part of its brilliant week long examination of Iraq.

Why is Hillary Clinton not setting the scene before announcing her position on all of these events? Simply, because these arguments will be the stuff of the campaign for her powerful candidature.

To understand this, it is necessary to understand that the American people have never been invited to debate the PNAC "vision" of protecting its economy and the financial security of its people in an increasingly politically, economically and resource hostile world by ensuring US hegemony and strength through the pre-emptive exercise of its supremacy as a world power. You will have to be very convincing to argue successfully that the electorate will reject the immediately available mechanisms off this vision for securing its future, and for which the less tangible alternatives involving long-term energy independence and complex international diplomatic engagement lack the same immediacy.

Hillary Clinton will not be wrong footed by the Republicans in a presidential election and, if we do not favour her, then those that are our favoured candidates in the Democratic primaries had better be alert to the subtle change that occurred in the primary campaign yesterday.

Dear Kossacks, you can spend the next two years proclaiming your position of purity. You can spend it getting increasingly dissatisfied with the politicians that are closest to representing your beliefs and hopes for the future. Yes, I will stand with you and I will march in protest in the streets of London against this war. Yet, if you do not want to be just marginalised and if you want to engage in the politics of your country you will hear what Hillary Clinton said yesterday.  Go read the article. She said that you need to get real.

I am tired of  reading  in your newspapers:

Underscoring the mounting tensions between the Democratic Congress and the White House, administration officials immediately issued a veto threat, even though the measure is considered unlikely to win final passage.... In the House, Democratic leaders scrambled on the eve of a critical test vote for their own Iraq legislation

Impassioned though the debate is about Iraq that is taking place right now on the floor of Congress, what is being discussed is a poor expression of compromised measures. It does not do justice to what we all believe here nor to what many of those politicians, desperately trying to give expression to our wishes, would hope.

Realistically, I can expect no more. You can expect no more. I don't want to argue about it. I want to admire all those achievements that the Democratic Party has achieved already in just three short months in relation to its domestic agenda and in rolling back the wrongs of the current administration. These should not be obscured by our rants about what has not been, and will be not be, possible.

We had better deal with the world that we have if we want to win, not the world that we wished we had. It is going to ask a lot of us and of our principles. We are the realists; we know that this is what politics is about. We are involved in it to win -  even if it is by taking smaller steps than we would ever want to take.