President Bush has delivered his much-anticipated speech laying out his new plan for resolving the mess he has created in Iraq. My reaction to the speech began last night while he was speaking. I fell asleep.

On reading the full text of his speech this morning, these are my reactions:

"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." This is about as close as Mr Bush will ever come to admitting that he and his national security and military team botched the invasion and occupation. The passive voice is a wonderful thing. A simple, "I have made some serious mistakes in the planning and execution of this war, and I accept full responsibility for them" would have resonated far better with me.

Mr Bush continues to link the war in Iraq to the so-called "war on terror." In this, I can agree with him: the ill-considered invasion and occupation of Iraq have radicalized an already-radical Islamic world, offering a prime training ground for new generations of single-minded jihadists.

Mr Bush stated that, "Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated." From which position of strength are we forcing him to make this promise, and why should we believe it now?

Mr Bush says that US and Iraqi forces will "... have a green light to enter these neighborhoods (where insurgents hide)." Fine. But I question whether our soldiers on the ground will be permitted to employ the utter ruthlessness that has been used by their enemies. They are fighting under legal and moral restrictions that their enemies ignore and use against them. The time has come to take the gloves off. If we are going to send more young men and women into harm's way, we should let them do what they must to get the job done. The Roman emperor Caligula supposedly once said of Rome's enemies, "Let them hate us as long as they fear us." Well, at the moment, our enemies hate us, but don't fear us because they know we won't fight them with all our ruthless might. If we're going to stay, it's time for the Caligula Option.

Mr Bush also said that he has "... made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people - and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people." The President appears not to have noticed that the Iraqi government - and his administration - have already lost the support of the American people.

I believe in my heart that America will, in the end, always do the right thing...after all other options have been exhausted. I believe we have exhausted those options. We gave the Iraqi people the gift of a future free of Saddam in a nation rich in oil resources. They used that gift instead to turn on each other and settle old scores. Granted, we have not given them much reason to view what we have done as a "gift," but that's no longer either here or there. The time has come to leave the Iraqis to their own devices. We must either go in with our full might, with the intention of utterly crushing the insurgency, or we should pull every US Soldier, Marine and Airman out of Iraq and return to the fundamental mission of tracking down and eliminating radical elements who have used or would employ the tactic of terror against us and our homeland.

Mr President, you have one last chance to earn my support. Use it.

Unfortunately, I don't think you will.

More thoughts later.

Bilbo