Prior to the Bush administration's ill-conceived adventurism in Iraq, waged on the back of a string of falsehoods and leaving countless corpses in its wake, most Iraqis identified themselves as Iraqi first and Sunni, Shiite, or Kurd second.

Not so today, as evidenced by the results of the Dec. 15 poll when voters mainly stayed true to their own religious or ethnic parties, resulting in a healthy majority for the Iraqi United Alliance, a religious Shiite coalition, rubber stamped by the powerful cleric Ali Al-Sistani.

Yet another winner is neighboring Iran, a fact that hasn't gone unnoticed by one of the country's leading newspapers, Kayhan, which last Sunday predicted "of the 275 seats in Iraq's new parliament, 140 will belong to pious Islamists, 60 will be occupied by Kurds with excellent ties with Iran, and 40 will belong to Sunni Arabs, most of whom want a sovereign Islamist state."

"Today's Iraq shows the two sides of the Middle Eastern coin," concludes the editorial, "the victory of Islamism, and the defeat and flight of the West."

The US is also lauding the elections as a watershed along Iraq's stony road to 'democracy' and the administration is, indeed, planning to drawn down its troop contingent, while according to reports, Britain is poised to pull out of Iraq along with several other coalition members.

Kurdish leaders are generally jolly concerning the result of the ballot, too, as the Iraqi United Alliance will not have the required two-thirds of the vote enabling it to form a parliament, leaving the Kurds, once again, as 'the kingmakers', and thus affording Kurds enough bargaining chips to cement their virtual autonomy and control over oil rich northern regions.

Once again, the Sunnis have been left out in the cold despite their eagerness to participate in elections this time around. Firstly, some 185 Sunni politicians were barred from running as candidates due to their alleged Baathist antecedents, while an Iraqi court has ruled that several elected Sunnis are to be barred from taking office for the same reason.

Sunni and secular coalition parties are also labeling the December ballot as "rigged," citing examples of closed polling stations and voters being allowed to cast multiple ballots. Some Sunni leaders complain of Iranian interference in the electoral process, while others are threatening a full-scale civil war unless there is a rerun.

A candidate in the mainly Sunni town of Sammara, Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Abbas said, "The electoral commission sold Iraq to Iran for free, because it is run by people in the pay of Tehran, even if they pretend to be impartial . . ."

Indeed, two prominent Shiite parties -- the Dawa and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) -- are believed to have strong ideological and financial ties with Iran.

Sunnis further complain that their communities are being unfairly targeted by the US-controlled Iraq military and police, largely made up of Shiites and Kurds. The recent discovery of hundreds of emaciated Sunni prisoners exhibiting signs of torture in Interior Ministry secret jails lends some weight to this contention.

This cannot be good news for the White House given its sour and worsening relations with Tehran. Preliminary counts also show that Ahmad Chalabi, a close pal of neocon architect Richard Perle, who is generally considered to be a CIA asset when he isn't flirting with the Iranians, has suffered a humiliating defeat. The same goes for another CIA associate, former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, backed by Downing Street.

Indeed, it is a wonder that Americans can stay upbeat concerning their country's ongoing presence in Iraq in light of the demise of almost 2,200 US military personnel as well as the spending of $230 billion of taxpayer's money, which has gone to fund an ostensible Iranian victory on the faux premise of fighting "terror."

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and thousands more left without fathers, husbands and sons, while thousands of young American soldiers will live out their lives without arms, legs and eyes. Even so, 39 percent of the American public remains on board the war, according to a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll.

It's difficult to know whether to congratulate the war's backers on their generosity with other people's lives and riches or to commiserate with them over their naivety in slavishly falling for such White House spin as Bush's Dec. 19 speech.

"To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor," he said, adding, "I will not allow it. We would abandon our Iraqi friends and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word."

In reality, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been reckless and dishonorable from the get-go, while the only friends America has in that country are the likes of Chalabi, Allawi and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, who all act out of either personal or sectarian self-interest.

As for America being trusted to keep its word, Mr. Bush has a short memory. Didn't he and others in his administration promise that mega stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction would be discovered in Iraq?

Didn't he regale us with tales of Saddam Hussein's supposed links to Al-Qaeda? Didn't he undertake to bring security and stability to Iraq, which would serve as a fine example for the entire Mideast?

Wasn't the US supposed to have rebuilt the infrastructure it destroyed during its campaign of 'shock and awe' and provided Iraqis with at least the bare essentials of water and electricity?

And what about Iraq's sovereignty that was promised and dutifully handed over on paper? Is Iraq a sovereign country when it can't even be allowed to run its own prison system or be responsible for the incarceration of its former president?

To those four-out-of-ten Americans who still support the occupation, I would say "take off your blinders." Ten years of US-led sanctions crippled that country and three years of occupation may have maimed its former cohesion and unity irreparably.

There is no honor in what your leadership has perpetrated on Iraq and the only honorable way forward is for the US to get out forthwith and let the Iraqis sort out the terrible mess your politicians, military, intelligence personnel and so-called 'contractors' have left behind.