From the inside out in Iraq

Patrick Cockburn is one of the most overlooked journalists in Iraq. He's been on site since day one of the invasion and should be on every talking head show in America, every day, but instead you have to search him out on the smaller website like Tom's Dispatch where they post his recent essay.

As Tom points out, Cockburn's reporting and analysis have been spot on throughout this whole sordid ordeal and the essay is no exception. Cockburn leads us through the labyrinth of wrongheaded decisions to the disatser of the present day policies. Countering the White House rhetoric with his own anecdotal evidence, he makes a good case for his closing graf.

The U.S. occupation has destabilized Iraq and the Middle East. Stability will not return until the occupation has ended. The Iraqi government, penned into the Green Zone, has become tainted in the eyes of Iraqis by reliance on a foreign power. Even when it tries to be independent, it seldom escapes the culture of dependency in which its members live. Much of what has gone wrong has more to do with the U.S. than Iraq. The weaknesses of its government and army have been exposed. Iraq has joined the list of small wars -- as France found in Algeria in the 1950s and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s -- that inflict extraordinary damage on their occupiers.

He's right. Every day that passes damages us and any chance of Maliki's government succeeding. In fact, Cheney's latest little surprise visit couldn't be any better designed to ensure its failure.

World leaders of sovereign countries don't get drop in visitors, they get state visits, well planned in advance. These surprise inspections smack of the big boss sneaking up on his underling to see what he's up to when nobody is watching. It's disrespectful and undermines what little authority Maliki holds. Small wonder that a majority of Iraqis believe the US is running their government and fully three quarters of them want us to leave.