Bush visits the outer territories

Any pretense of Iraq being a sovereign nation with an elected government in charge that the US military is simply assisting to maintain security was lost yesterday when the country's Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was not informed of a state visit until minutes before he was to meet the US President...right there in Baghdad in what is supposed to be Maliki's own country. It sends the obvious message that security is so precarious there that the country's supposedly legitimate and America-friendly Government is not permitted to know who is coming or going. It could also mean that the Administration doesn't trust the Iraqi Government a whole hell of a lot. So let's all just stop pretending that Iraq is anything more than a protectorate of the US military that is currently experiencing the beginnings of a civil war. Anything else is just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking at best and propaganda at worst. I wonder which country is going to burden the US taxpayer next by having itself overrun and turned into a war zone? And I wonder how many more of my tax dollars are going to go to enriching slick contractors out there making money off of all the misery? So many questions.