Lesson for Western nations: Keep out of the politics of the Third World
There is no way out of the Iraq quagmire other than for the US and other well-meaning liberators to get out, thereby cutting their own losses. The "significantly smart" members of the Gulf2000 List can cogitate all they want, but I'm afraid that Iraq is "lost."
It is lost in the sense that the current prescription of imposing elections on an unwilling and unacceoting electorate isn't going to work. Nor is the imposition of more troops to maintain law and order. As I've written before in this discussion, Iraqis are going to have to themselves sort out the mess that the US and other proselytizers of Western-style democracy have created. They should not have to, but that is what they've been bequeathed by the mandarins of Washington and Whitehall.
I don't believe that the loss of Iraq to Western circles of influences will be such a bad thing. I recall that "significantly smart" observers -- i.e. Western, and specifically American commentators -- bemoaned the "loss" of Iran when the Shia theocrats toppled the corrupt regime of Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi in 1979. Some 26 years later, the ayatollahs are still in power, oil from Iran still flows to the West, everyday Iranians still go about their everyday business, and significantly smart observers still lament the loss of Iran to Western hegemony.
There's a message in all this for the West: Stay out of the developing world. Or, at least, please do not try to inject your notions of governance and democracy in societies that have their own special culture, history and religious and ethnic sensitivities.