This is the sovereign government of Iraq for whom our troops are supposedly fighting and dying so Iraqis can have their freedoms, liberties and justice for all:

BAGHDAD, Jan. 23 — Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, read a roll call of the 275 elected members with a goal of shaming the no-shows.

Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister? Absent, living in Amman and London. Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian statesman? Also gone, in Abu Dhabi.

Others who failed to appear Monday included Saleh Mutlak, a senior Sunni legislator; several Shiites and Kurds; and Ayad al-Samaraei, chairman of the finance committee, whose absence led Mr. Mashhadani to ask: “When will he be back? After we approve the budget?”

It was a joke barbed with outrage. Parliament in recent months has been at a standstill. Nearly every session since November has been adjourned because as few as 65 members made it to work, even as they and the absentees earned salaries and benefits worth about $120,000.

Part of the problem is security, but Iraqi officials also said they feared that members were losing confidence in the institution and in the country’s fragile democracy. As chaos has deepened, Parliament’s relevance has gradually receded. […]

“Parliament is the heart of the political process,” Mr. Mashhadani said in an interview at his office, offering more hope than reality. “It is the center of everything. If the heart is not working, it all fails.”

Monday’s attendance actually surpassed the 50 percent plus one needed to pass laws. It was the first quorum in months, caused in part by the return of 30 members loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose end to a two-month boycott created a public relations blitz that helped attract 189 members. </blockquote

My guess? I think they are just taking their cues from the Republicans. Limited government, doncha know, is the best. Democracy means your elected officials never have to show up for work if they’ve got other priorities. After all, what harm could it do?

But seriously, this government is what the American “surge” is supposed to support? Few in Iraq seem to think this government is even relevant anymore. It’s a house of cards just waiting to fall:

Some of Iraq’s more seasoned leaders say attendance has been undermined by a widening sense of disillusionment about Parliament’s ability to improve Iraqis’ daily life. The country’s dominant issue, security, is almost exclusively the policy realm of the American military and the office of the prime minister.

Every bombing like the one on Monday, which killed 88 people at a downtown market, suggests to some that Parliament’s laws are irrelevant in the face of sprawling chaos and the government’s inability to stop it.

“People are totally disenchanted,” Mr. Pachachi said in a telephone interview from Abu Dhabi. “There has been no improvement in the security situation. The government seems to be incapable of doing anything despite all the promises.”

The Iraq government is incapable. It’s been revealed as a sham, merely a puppet which Bush and the Shi’a militias take turns manipulating for their own ends. I don’t think 20,000 more American troops and their concomitant armament are going to fix that. To paraphrase a current political figure, this Iraqi government that Mr. Bush lauds to the skies seems to me to be in its last throes.

Mr. President, nation building ain’t as easy as it looked back in 2002-2003 when you ignored the advice of your reality based advisors, is it? Not that you’ll ever learn that lesson.