Yesterday the news leaked out that in a December 8th raid by forces of the American sovereign entity upon an Interior Ministry detention center operated by the Iraqi sovereign entity 600 detainees were found cramped into space for less than half that number. 13 of the detainees were immediately transferred to hospitals to treat their injuries. It was the second such raid by the American sovereign entity upon a detention center operated by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The first raid – or at least the first reported raid occurred last month on November 15th when a unit of the Third Infantry forced its way into an Interior Ministry bunker in Baghdad and found 169 mistreated and malnourished prisoners – some of whom, the Army said, had been subjected to what our army called torture.

If, as the President and his Administration has maintained, we are making good progress toward the establishment of a free and democratic Iraq respectful individual liberty and freedom how then does he explain the existence of detention camps where prisoners are mistreated and tortured operated by the very government that coalition soldiers are fighting and dying to establish and maintain? If, as the President and his Administration has maintained, Iraq is a sovereign entity in its relations with the United States how then does he explain by what authority American soldiers raid on facilities operated by a ministry of that very “sovereign” government that the Americans created on June 28, 2004?

I don’t know which aspect of the story is the more shocking. Is it the operation of two torture camps by the client government in Baghdad; the government that our President hails as the establishment of the first, albeit nescient democracy in the Moslem Middle East? Is it the intrusion of American troops in the sovereign operations of the government to which we pretended to deliver sovereignty 18 months ago?

While the President continues his magical mystery tour reselling his splendid little war to the American people events on the ground spin on. Perhaps he can explain how, after Abu Ghraib, we subcontracted the treatment of Iraqi detainees to the sovereign government of Iraq and then found it necessary for one sovereign party to the contract to raid the operations of the other. It is confusing but then so is sovereignty – at least to this President.