Abstract: What follows is the lightly edited text of a lecture delivered at the Brooklyn Law School Symposium on War and Trade on September 22, 2005. I argued that, as of the date of the lecture, the United States had already been defeated in Iraq, predicted an exit strategy likely to be adopted by the Bush administration, and assessed the likely circumstances of the defeat for the various participants in the conflict. I ended with a statement that we should embrace our defeat as good for the world at large, however terrible for the Iraqi people. Of course, by the time the text went to the printer, much had changed, and by the time it finds its way to the reader’s hands, yet more will have changed. I am grateful to the Brooklyn Journal of International Law for its willingness to publish the lecture nonetheless., as a contribution to the debate on the war and also to the archive of anti-war speeches that may interest future historians of the domestic conflict over the conflict.