Nouri al-Maliki clearly learned well from his American benefactors with respect to criminal detentions. For instance, he learned how to torture and get away with it:

Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country’s Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.

The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.

This isn’t the first time brutal treatment of Sunnis by the ruling government has been discovered in Iraq. So I’m not sure this will provoke the kind of large-scale sectarian violence we’ve been expecting for a couple years in Iraq. But certainly, Maliki is completely tainted, and his ability to muscle back into the Prime Minister position must be called into serious question by now.

And Maliki got a boost yesterday from an Iraqi court calling for a partial recount of Baghdad. If Sunnis weren’t angered by their brothers and sisters being tortured by Maliki’s goons, they can get their dander up about having their favored election candidate win and then have his victory stolen.

Basically, we facilitated the return of authoritarianism in Iraq. We traded one strongman for another that would hopefully like us. And the choices for the future of Iraq are that strongman, another strongman in Iyad Allawi, and whoever the Iran-linked Shiite fundamentalists choose.

Keep in mind, this is the war that’s going WELL at the moment.