One year on from the start of the Iraq war, and George is still claiming he did the right thing.

No apology for the false premise on which the war was started, no apology to the families of those who died and still die each day as a result of that false premise, just a smug self-satisfaction that he got his way and bagged the man who was nasty to his daddy.

Now he's using it to try to secure another four years in the White House.

In the first of his big election rallies in Florida, Dubya mocked Democratic candidate John Kerry for claiming he had a lot of support from overseas, but wouldn't say from whom exactly. Bush smirked: "I'm not too worried because I'm going to keep my campaign right here in America," and the crowd went wild. Predictably enough the chant of "USA, USA" rang around the hall.

Electorally this is all well and good. One expects people to have pride in their nation and party at the time of a political showdown.

But underlying this token piece of electoral oneupmanship was the disdain for the rest of the world that has been the hallmark of the Bush administration, and which hit its lowest point when he and Tony went against the world to invade Iraq.

Bush knows that he doesn't have popular support in most countries, but that doesn't matter. He needs no one's permission. Threats and emotional blackmail were enough for him to build his coalition of the willing. Most countries are lucky even to be worthy of Dubya's contempt - why should he waste valuable grey matter on caring what the President of Lithuania thinks?

An innocent America is suffering for its association with this imbecile. (The American people are innocent, of course, because the popular vote was not with Bush in 2000 - something else he bullied and bludgeoned his way into). And friends of mine are among those suffering.

Just ask Wendy, a great advert for the American Midwest (and the US in general). She's spent a lot of time in Sicily since the start of the war and been frustrated by the flack she's drawn as an unwilling proxy for Bush and the US foreign policy.

Wendy and tens of millions of decent Americans like her don't deserve this treatment. For some, it may even strengthen their impression that the world hates America itself, and that they should re-elect Bush just as a show of defiance.

We can't allow that to happen. But we need to get our message right, and not all those who want to see changes in Washington and London are making the best of the time they have.

As Bush was making his speech, people around the globe were taking to the streets to protest about last year's military action. Many of them were calling for the troops to pull out of Iraq immediately.

But that would be a mistake even larger than the initial invasion. Bush may have rid Iraq of a gruesome dictator, but he did far more damage to the country than many people feared.

Ordinary Iraqis are dying as a result of terrorist attacks almost every day, and if international forces leave the violence will only get worse. The saddest thing is, those of us who opposed the war from the beginning knew this would happen.

We can't abandon Iraq now. It's our mess and we should clear it up. And anyone who thinks the job will be done by the time power's handed over to Iraqis in July is a bigger fool than Dubya.

But that doesn't mean we should make Blair and Bush stay until they finish the work. There are men and women far more capable than these two, and we should ask them to make right everything which has gone so wrong.

Let's map the way for the Iraqi people by demonstrating that a nation's leaders should care more about ballots than they do about bullets.

After all, isn't that what we bombed them for?