Whose Sovereignty?

The President is not the only member of the administration on the move this week. The same day that Bush gave his Oval Office address, Vice President Cheney made a surprise visit to Iraq. These surprise visits have been a somewhat regular occurrence in Iraq even after the oddly staged ‘transfer of sovereignty’ in June 2004, with Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice, along with Cheney, each making unannounced visits to the troops throughout the past two years of occupation. These fly-by-night junkets only expose the emptiness of the rhetoric of democracy and self-determination permeating the Bush administration’s spin. What kind of sovereignty does a country possess when its own prime minister is surprised to find out that the vice president of an occupying power is in his country?