Until this point Washington's model of "liberation" in the Middle East was the mass cemetery and torture chamber that it created in Iraq. The Obama administration is trying to offer a new model amid this revolutionary upsurge. Increasingly, all signs are pointing towards a negotiated settlement which excludes Gaddafi but protects the basic contours of the regime. This is what is signposted by the "pathway to peace" document signed by Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy. It will be, if it happens, a typical imperial carve-up. That would constitute, not a victory for the Libyan revolutionaries, but their confirmed defeat.