The Iraq Study Group Report is a known missile...shattering all myths and placing emphasis on the crucial/critical elements of the way out in Iraq. The Baker/Hamilton team has helped us all to name the beast, and bell the cat, as it were. Good turn.

Reactions and potential actions should unfold over the coming weeks and months. Rightly, we should be particularly patient and patently contemplative in this period. We need a cooling of nerves, and we need to give Bob Gates time to settle into his remit as secretary of defence.

Listening to both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair (at their post-ISG press conference)yesterday was a sight to behold. It was a very sombre and sobering event. You could castigate or feel for them, depending on your hurt or previous glee-of-the-invasion, but you could not but see/watch history being written, and legacies being unravelled, before your very eyes. On global TV, in real time! The ingredients, nuances and salience were nerve-racking. Utterly surreal.

Let's grant Mr Bush his right to further briefings, notably from his inhouse gurus, including the military and the State Department - as he insists. Let's grant Mr Blair's offering to go "unlock" the "barred" door to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Let's wish them good going as they scramble to redeem whatever is left of their political capital, and deploying same (we hope, deftly and wisely!) to the gargantuan task in hand. Even as time speedest.

At this point, Russia, France and China should start working on both Syria and Iran to come on board - through the UN - and save Iraq from final implosion. For sane measure, someone must tell both Bush and Blair to be contrite and humble about this need, this reality.

We wait.