On November 7, 2006, the American people sent an emphatic, unmistakable message to President Bush – end the Iraq occupation and bring our troops home as soon as possible.  Did he hear it?  One month later, Iraq continues to burn, while its unity government appears less viable with each passing day, and the chances increase of an armed conflict that would engulf the entire Middle East.

On Wednesday, we will hear the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, the supposed oracle that will help us achieve some kind of face-saving peace with honor.  But if the preliminary leaks are accurate, what James Baker and his team are offering is difference-splitting mush.  They concede that troops must be withdrawn but express no sense of urgency in the form of any timetable.

The question of the Group’s report may be entirely moot, if we take President Bush’s words at face value.  Exhibiting near-pathological denial, he continues to insist that our soldiers will stay until we achieve some ill-defined victory on an ill-defined mission.  (Even though the mission was supposedly accomplished – remember the notorious banner on the aircraft carrier? -- in May of 2003).

We are not impressed by the argument that we can’t bring home the troops because the result would be catastrophic.  How much more catastrophic can it possibly get?  The truth is -- the current policy is the catastrophe.

Even the head of the CIA went so far as to describe the sectarian violence as “satanic.”  While the White House refuses to upgrade the conflict to a “civil war,” that term – which at least connotes the relative tidiness of two sides battling for state control -- may actually be too generous for what is happening.  What we have is multiple thuggish factions raining down mayhem and vigilantism on the people of Iraq, with morgues overflowing and city streets strewn with corpses.  No one knows for sure the extent of the civilian casualties, but the most conservative estimates are that 50,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed for the sake of their own so-called liberation.

There isn’t much that’s encouraging on the political front.  The man who the White House would have us believe is the George Washington of Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki, is a political eunuch being propped up by a radical cleric and Shiite militia leader.  Indeed, legislators allied with Moqtada al-Sadr walked out of parliament last week, raising the specter of a complete collapse of the Iraqi government and perhaps a militia-engineered coup.  Is this the kind of democracy we were promised?

Meanwhile on the ground militarily, we have all but admitted defeat at the hands of the insurgents in western Iraq.  A Marine Corps intelligence assessment conceded that al-Qaeda has taken over Anbar province, where Sunnis are now cowed into submission instead of having an opportunity to-self-govern.

This is what the occupation has wrought.  It threatens to plunge Iraq into the abyss.  And lest we forget, it has cost us nearly 2,900 of our finest young men and women, roughly $350 billion of the people’s money so far, and virtually all of our global credibility and good will.

This is not a time for genteel incrementalism.  Democrats earned a mandate not to “work with” the President, but rather to challenge him.  So we are urging, as we both have for some time, a troop withdrawal that begins immediately and is completed hopefully by the middle of next year.  Under such a plan, the United States would terminate the construction of permanent military bases, while accelerating Iraqi rebuilding efforts and helping pull together a UN-sponsored interim international force to provide some measure of security in Iraq.

Only the most deluded White House spinner or apologist can now say that the Iraq intervention, now longer than U.S. involvement in World War II, has been worth the sacrifice.  Some of us warned of the consequences in 2002 and 2003 -- we’ve been proven right, and the American people have endorsed our view.

So now is the time to stop the dithering, the delay and the denial.  No more blue-ribbon panels, no more meetings or symposiums.  No more platitude-filled press conferences like the one the President held with Prime Minister Maliki in Jordan last week.  It’s time to end the occupation and bring our troops home.

Lynn Woolsey represents California’s 6th Congressional District, and Former Senator George McGovern is the co-author with William Polk of Out of Iraq Now: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now.