Six months on from their military victory over the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, the United States and Britain are struggling to avoid a political defeat there. Their occupation forces have presided over an increasingly chaotic and dangerous country, in which security and the provision of basic infrastructure are sorely wanting, as correspondents for this newspaper and other media have graphically reported.
While most Iraqis welcome Saddam's departure, they are more and more impatient about these failings, so that resistance against the occupying force is increasing, not diminishing. They are demanding that power be transferred to Iraqis on an agreed calendar and endorsed by the United Nations in a new resolution mandating this.
In this they are more and more in tune with international opinion. At the UN there is an impasse over the resolution, which calls for more international funding and troops, but still leaves effective power with the US.
President Bush and his administration face difficult choices on all these matters. They have trenchantly defended their decision to attack Iraq without a UN mandate, arguing that the pre-emptive policy was fully justified by Saddam Hussein's alleged role as a link between terrorist movements and weapons of mass destruction. Their case remains unconvincing at home and abroad. Other states are willing to co-operate in aiding and bringing security to Iraq if its sovereignty is respected and power transferred - but only on those conditions. Otherwise the costly economic and military burden will be borne mainly by the US, with uncertain consequences for Mr Bush's ability to be re-elected next year.
While Turkey has voted this week to provide troops, the offer is very unpopular in Iraq. Other large states, such as India and Pakistan, are not willing to send them without a satisfactory UN mandate.
In his speech in Washington yesterday, the US vice-president, Mr Cheney, resurrected the theme he used in the build-up to the war, that the US cannot sacrifice its security to the veto of another state at the UN.
This unilateralist logic cuts across the administration's recent efforts to win UN support and is another reminder of the divisions that have driven the Bush administration's Iraq policy. The announcement this week that the Pentagon's control over the occupation is to be loosened was another straw in the wind. Transferring sovereignty back to the Iraqis under UN authority is the proper way out of this dilemma.