These are not the actions of a man who shares the US goal of creating a multi-ethnic Iraq, in which Sunnis are represented and their rights protected.

Al-Maliki may not even tolerate the presence of more US troops for long, although he spared Bush the humiliation this week of saying so outright. But leading Shias, close to al-Maliki and his sometime rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, have openly opposed the notion of a “surge”, as an encroachment into Iraqi sovereignty. There lies the rub. They have taken the US at its word — that it has transferred sovereignty to Iraq’s elected leaders, and is staying only to advise and help. Let us run our country, then, and tell the US how to help, is their answer. But after years of suppression by the Sunni elite, the leaders of the Shia majority seem in little mood to make concessions to a minority, although they go through the motions of acknowledging the principle in their pledges to the US.

Yet the al-Maliki Government has ignored every target the US set it: last year, this summer, and again in October. The US asked it to put into action a plan for sharing oil revenues across the country, and cracking down on militias, both to help Sunnis; it has done neither.

This week Bush asked it for the same things, once more. It is hard to see why it will oblige, when it has felt no need to do so before.