but which way will it all fall? "For Mr Bush, the gamble has yet to pay off. The transfer of power has come at a time of increasing violence in Iraq and diminishing public support for the war at home. Iraq's gruesome images dominate evening television newscasts and the issue is stuck squarely at centre stage in the election campaign. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll out late last week showed that for the first time since the start of the war, most Americans - 54 per cent - believe it was a mistake to have sent US troops to Iraq. When the war began last year, three out of four supported the idea to send in US forces.

The poll's findings marked the first time since the Vietnam war that a majority of Americans labelled such a big troop deployment a mistake." Read the whole thing at the Financial Times.