Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has just taken the ultimate dare of American politics: He's started telling them the truth about Iraq.

But only a part of the truth. So he's not going to be heard.

"At every step of the road he (President George W. Bush) has taken the wrong turn and he has led us in the wrong direction," Kerry said in a major foreign policy speech at New York University this week.

The president, had "misled, miscalculated and mismanaged every aspect of this (Iraq) undertaking."

In Iraq, Americans were fighting "a growing insurgency in an ever-widening war." As a result of what was happening there, "The world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans."

All absolutely true, and well said, if very belatedly so.

In August, American casualties in Iraq topped 1,000, following the highest count in any month since the invasion, now almost 18 months old.

This rate of casualties is rising even though American commanders are holding back their men to hold down the count, at least until the November election.

Kidnapping is now so common (it's as often by criminals as by politically motivated terrorists) that three so-called civilian contractors, two American and one British, were kidnapped in broad daylight in central Baghdad last week. One of them has since been executed.

Middle-class Iraqis, the very ones most likely to be genuinely interested in democracy, are being forced to flee the country.

The insurgency is now so widespread and so effective that key economic activities such as the production of oil have been reduced to the level they were at when Saddam Hussein was near to the end of his crazed regime. Ever-widening parts of the country, particularly in Baghdad and in the so-called "Sunni triangle" are now no-go areas.

This reduces the risks to American and other coalition troops. But it increases the rate of civilian casualties as warplanes and attack helicopters are used, instead, to attack the insurgents from a safe distance.

And it gives the terrorists safe havens where they can rest, train and assemble their bombs.

As for the effect of the carnage in Iraq upon the wider war against terrorism, the British ambassador to Italy has just caused a major diplomatic incident by allowing himself to tell the truth at a closed-door conference in Rome.

The luckless ambassador's comment, which got leaked to the Italian press and which has thereby caused a major diplomatic incident, was that Bush has become "Al Qaeda's best recruiting sergeant."

But while all this and a great deal more that's now going on in Iraq is exactly as Kerry told it, he couldn't bring himself to tell it like it really is. And this is that the U.S. is facing failure in Iraq, just as it had to face it more than three decades ago in Vietnam.

To describe what he would do in Iraq if he becomes president, Kerry put forward a vague, four-point program. It's no more credible, though, than Bush's. Thus, Kerry said he would immediately call together the America's allies to mobilize them to help out in Iraq. But, as an example, would Canada actually get directly involved there, even if the U.S. president were Kerry, and a Democrat with whom Canadians tend to feel comfortable, rather than Bush? To ask that question is to answer it.

In the end, there are only two ways to get out of a quagmire. To dig furiously, in the hope of eventually finding firm ground. Or just to get out.

Bush's policy is the first. It won't work since he is, indeed, performing like a recruiting sergeant for Al Qaeda.

Kerry's policy, though, is not the second option. It's instead the worst option of all. It's a bit of both. He would start withdrawing troops next year and bring them all out in four years, or by the end of his first term.

During the Vietnam War, public opinion turned against the conflict once Americans realized they were sacrificing their lives in a futile mission.

This time, although far less confidently than at its start, public opinion still supports the war in Iraq. The reason is that Americans remain convinced that cost of a withdrawal would be an increase in attacks upon them in their own homeland.

Until that attitude changes, Kerry cannot tell his voters the truth — that they've lost the war and the sooner they turn their backs on it the better.

So he tells them only part of the truth. When he says it, he doesn't sound like he really believes it. Which is why Americans — as yet — don't believe in him.

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