General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army, has gone on the record in
an interview with the Daily Mail.
He says clearly we should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems."
"We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear."
As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren't invited certainly by those in Iraq at the time.
"The military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in. Whatever consent we may have had in the first place, may have turned to tolerance and has largely turned to intolerance."
This will be disastrous for Blair's last days. It's also an unprecedented breach of protocol that's bordering on mutinous - serving soldiers do not usually set policy, or comment on it.
While the Daily Mail, which tends towards a rather rabidly British kind of wingnuttery, is clearly using this story for political capital that will play well with its readers, that doesn't change the fact that the story is still true.
So - another big development in the Iraq saga that will make some waves on both sides of the pond, and could possibly even affect the mid-terms.