General Sir Michael Walker, chief of the defence staff, also conceded that Britain and the United States would have to settle for a less-than-perfect result from the invasion of Iraq.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Walker rejected as “absolute nonsense” suggestions that the British Army stood back and allowed militias to take control of the police in southern Iraq.

And he was adamant that the fallout from the arrest and rescue of two SAS soldiers in Basra would have no effect on the eventual transfer of power from British to Iraqi security forces.

However, he acknowledged that morale and recruitment have been damaged by the fact that the armed forces are fighting a war that is deeply unpopular at home.

If anything, the war helped recruitment and morale at the start, Walker said. “There was an understanding by members of the armed services that this war was not an all-hands- up, popular event across the country.

“But I think at that stage they were able to decouple in their own minds, as I was, the fact that the country was not necessarily behind the strategic decision to go to war, but once our boys and girls were out there, doing their various things, they would support them in that role.

“Now I think that’s shifted a bit, if I’m absolutely honest. Some of the opprobrium attached to the war is also attached to the fact that the armed services are taking part in it. We are, if you like, guilty by association with a decision to go to war that not the whole of this country enjoined.”

So what conditions would allow British and American troops to leave? Is the war in Iraq really winnable?

“Winnable is the wrong word,” Walker said. “I think what it is, is that there is a ‘my glass is half full’.”

Not quite mission accomplished then? Walker chose his words carefully but it was clear from the “half-full” reference that ambitions have been scaled down.

“I have no doubt that, providing we can keep the training and the security sector reform going, and providing some of the reconstruction will continue at the present rate, we’ll reach a point where we can see an Iraq that is self-governing, providing its own security and has a democracy of the form that the Iraqis want.”

So how long will British troops have to remain in Iraq? What precisely is the exit strategy? How long is it all going to take? “How long is a piece of string?” Walker retorted. “We don’t see it as being up to us. We really do see it as being up to the Iraqi government as to how long they are prepared to continue to accept foreign troops on their soil.

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