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They are reluctant primarily because, so long as Mr Bush insists that he was right, they see any contribution as shoring up his misguided messianic cause. This is why there was never the slightest chance of any wider international involvement in Iraq before the US election and why Mr Kerry’s pledge, if elected, to internationalise the stabilisation of Iraq may be more realistic than it seems.”Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” is the only guarantee that nothing like this reckless war will ever happen again. As such, it is the “Open Sesame” to internationalisation and a more peaceful Iraq. Mr Kerry needs to reclaim it as his anti-war cry, and fast.m.dejevsky independent.co.uk
More from Mary Dejevsky. In essence Michael Howard seeks to convey a single message: you can trust me. Last week Tony Blair sought to address what he called “this trust problem”.

For the two party leaders, securing or regaining the trust of voters is a prime objective. If I couldn’t do this, with all my leadership ability and personal charm, he implied, you haven’t a hope. Maybe France and the others would draw the line at sending combat troops to Iraq. My guess is, though, is that even France would countenance some sort of involvement – military, diplomatic, humanitarian or financial – in an international effort to “save” and rebuild Iraq.No one will do this, however, without an acknowledgement from the White House that the war was a mistake. After their bids to help with reconstruction were rejected – no soldiers, no contracts, they were told – they justifiably left the US, Britain and a handful of others to their own devices. The Bush administration has now written them out of the script.Mr Kerry, though, has not. He insists that one of his first tasks, if elected, would be to assemble a genuine coalition, including troops, to share the burden in Iraq Mr Bush has laughed this off bitterly.

“Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” is a bald statement of what a growing number of people around the world have come to believe as Iraq has run out of control. Bravo!It is easier, of course, for an opposition leader or challenger to voice such a contrary view than for the people, such as Mr Bush, Mr Cheney and Mr Blair, who actually took their countries to war on a pretext – Saddam’s weapons – that now turns out to have been so false. For many people, though, this unconditional admission of error is surely the first and most elementary condition for agreeing to help the United States out of its predicament.The Germans, Russians and especially the French, whose opposition to the war was so scorned by the US and Britain, have been decent beyond the call of diplomacy in not publicly rubbing Mr Bush’s nose in the mess he has created in Iraq. Hence Mr Bush’s urgent need to neutralise Mr Kerry’s accusation, even turn it against him. “Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” is, I would hazard, precisely what many of those foreign governments which opposed Mr Bush’s Iraq adventure have been longing to hear. It may also be the forthright admission of error that individual opponents of the war have waited for so long.There is no waffle here, no excuses, no hair-splitting about apologies that “could” be made, no weasel words about wrong intelligence and right judgement. He used it to question Mr Kerry’s credentials to be commander-in-chief.