History will not be kind to George Bush.

"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people - and it is unacceptable to me," he said in a prime-time address from the White House. "Where mistakes have been made the responsibility rests with me."

These are the first honest words George Bush has spoken in years. However, the American people and he differ over what should now be done. Most Americans are opposed to the escalation that he is implementing. Not that you would know this from his speech tonight. Just as when he mentioned the Iraq Study group one would be forgiven for imagining that he was doing things roughly in line with their views, rather than totally ignoring their recommendations.

It was a startlingly dishonest speech. Once again he implied that a future 9-11 could only be prevented through success in Iraq, as if the two events were in some way connected. Once again he threatened Iran, rather than engaging them in dialogue as the Baker Report suggested.

Explicitly admitting that he was acting on the advice of Joe Liebermann - no doubt in an attempt to sound bipartisan - he said that people who disagreed must point out how their way could guarantee success, implying that success was somehow still possible, a success which most of us have now accepted as unachievable.

He then - again - attempted to lay the responsibility for the defeat of the insurgency at the door of Maliki's government:

If Mr Maliki did not uphold the pledge, he risked losing US support, Mr Bush warned. "I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment to Iraq is not open-ended," the president said.

In other words, clean up my mess or I am out of here.

All in all, it was the speech that we all expected. Bush has no other avenue open to him. His legacy will be the Iraq war and it is a war that he has lost in spectacular fashion. We expect too much if we expect him to admit this.

So he would rather risk the lives of more US troops rather than admit his defeat and go down in history as the worst American President ever. Although I feel this title is his no matter what he now does in Iraq.

Even Republican senators have been voicing their disapproval of Bush's latest harebrained scheme:

Gordon Smith, said US troops were being placed "in the role of a traffic cop in someone else's civil war".

Mr Gordon added: "American patience is not inexhaustible, and they [the administration] have about worn it out."

Another Republican senator and possible presidential candidate, Sam Brownback, who was on a visit to Iraq, sent back a message to Washington registering his opposition.

Senator Norm Coleman also joined in, saying Mr Bush's plans would only put more US troops in the crosshairs of a sectarian insurgency. "I oppose the troop surge in Baghdad because it is not a strategy for victory," he said.

So Bush now stands spectacularly alone. He has dispensed with any generals who gave advice contrary to that which he wanted to hear. He has lost the support of the American public and he is losing the support of some members of the Republican Party itself.

They say the quality of leadership is the ability to fashion a vision that others will willingly follow. There can be no greater testament to Bush's failure than the fact that he is totally and completely on his own here. There are no crowds rushing to follow his vision, no public united against his enemies.

For most reasonable people have long concluded that Iraq is lost and that Baker offered the only hope of withdrawal without a descent into civil war. Bush has ignored him.

As Fisk points out today, in an article I will reprint in full, history is littered with leaders who thought they could batter their way to victory against all the odds:

It is de rigueur, these days, to recall Vietnam, the false victories, the body counts, the torture and the murders ­ but history is littered with powerful men who thought they could batter their way to victory against the odds. Napoleon comes to mind; not the emperor who retreated from Moscow, but the man who believed the wild guerrilleros of French-occupied Spain could be liquidated. He tortured them, he executed them, he propped up a local Spanish administration of what we would now call Quislings, al-Malikis to a man. He rightly accused his enemies ­ Moore and Wellington ­ of supporting the insurgents. And when faced with defeat, Napoleon took the personal decision "to relaunch the machine" and advanced to recapture Madrid, just as Bush intends to recapture Baghdad. Of course, it ended in disaster. And George Bush is no Napoleon Bonaparte.

No, I would turn to another, less flamboyant, far more modern politician for prophecy, an American who understood, just before the 2003 launch of Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq, what would happen to the arrogance of power. For their relevance this morning, the words of the conservative politician Pat Buchanan deserve to be written in marble:

"We will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the 'On to Berlin' bravado with which French poilus and British tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict ... For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world ...

"The one endeavour at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon... We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before."

So Bush, alone, is calling on the troops to make one more charge. George Bush is no Napoleon Bonaparte. Though he is about to experience a similar defeat.

The real tragedy here though will be experienced by the young men and women who will now be placed in mortal danger because an arrogant leader is unwilling to admit that he is wrong.

History will not be kind to George Bush. It will rightly see that he risked the lives of others - not for the patriotic reasons that he trumpeted - but rather, because he lacked the grace to admit that he had lost.

There can be no more dishonourable legacy than that.

tag: Bush, war on terror, Iraq, Iraq war, Stay the course, sacrifice, surge and accelerate, Iraq Survey Group, The Baker Report