It took about 20 minutes after the last official US combat troops crossed the border from Iraq into Kuwait for the Potemkin village of 鈥淚raqi stability and democracy鈥, carefully built by the occupation, to fall apart.
The regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki brought a terrorism indictment against the vice-president, Tariq al-Hashimi, who promptly headed north to autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, where the central government鈥檚 hand doesn鈥檛 reach. Purges of university professors and arrests of political figures not favoured by the Maliki regime have begun.