I Bombed Your House, Raped Your Wife, Slaughtered Your Children - And It's All Your Fault!

The ISG report states that Baghdad must prove that it “deserves” future aid. Is this part of the cunning new strategery?

“You could call it ‘blame and run’,?” said Zbigniew Bzrezinski, a former national security adviser now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “It is based on a pervasive illusion that there is such a thing as an Iraqi government. The more we blame it for doing things it cannot do, the more impotent it will become. ‘Blame and run’ is self-fulfilling.”

Some are warning, however, that blaming the Iraqis will be counter-productive:

“The more we blame the Iraqis, the less political space Mr Maliki will have to act,” said a former senior administration official. “He cannot be seen to be implementing a long shopping list of items out of Washington.”

Err, dude? The White House don't actually want al-Maliki to have political space.