a senior State Department official, William Burns, to join Washington's allies at a negotiating table with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator (albeit to keep his own mouth shut).

In step with this shocking demonstration of sanity, the White House made no serious attempt to up-end Obama's trip to Iraq or excessively ridicule the harmonies from the Democratic candidate and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on schedules for US withdrawal. If it had so desired, the White House could easily have made Obama's trip extremely uncomfortable. All it would have taken was something such as a provocative overflight of Tehran, with subsequent flexing of muscles.

As final testimony to the huge disaster for the McCain campaign of Obama's trip to Iraq, the floundering Republican candidate managed to shoehorn himself into talk about a rate of withdrawal from Iraq a good deal brisker than the 100 years of occupation he was talking about in the spring, or even the 2013 deadline he subsequently settled on.

The fact is that the peace lobby in Washington has scored another victory over the war party, just as it did with the joint assessment of the intelligence services last year that war on Iran was a rotten idea. This time, wiser heads than Dick Cheney's have acknowledged the fact that the price rises for fuel are savaging an already weak economy and tottering credit system. War on Iran would be the coup de grace.

At the Republican convention in Minneapolis at the start of September, Bush is being given the first day. Of course, he could use it as a trumpet blast, draping the warrior's mantle around McCain's seasoned shoulders. But it's more likely now that Bush will announce yet again, 'Mission Accomplished'. What does that leave McCain with, against the candidate of hope and change?