Certainly, in the near-term future we have to ask them to be a lot more accountable in terms of the behaviour of their security services, the behaviour of their army, and the behaviour of their security establishment overall. We cannot pour money and then when we demand accounting and specific action, have them shield themselves behind sovereignty.
From this point of view, as you said, the long-term political process is a much longer affair. But as long as we are engaged on the ground, and as long as we provide vital air support to prevent the overrun of major Iraqi cities, with all the problems this creates in the long run that have been highlighted by another member, they do need to be accountable.
I would stress again that we knew there was an insurgency brewing in the areas that are now controlled by the Iraqi state. It was very obvious. We had a lot of people on the ground and so on and so forth. When we confronted the Iraqi government with that information and we asked them what they intended to do about all of that, they told us not to worry and that everything was under control. This is unacceptable if we then have to move in and basically save them from extinction.
There is a very good book by Professor Toby Dodge of the London School of Economics. It's a pretty short book and it takes Iraq from occupation to autocracy and it details—it's a very brief book so it's very readable and it's very policy oriented—how the Iraqi government, under al-Maliki, assumed much more of an authoritarian character.
In the short term, we have to ask them to be accountable. If we send people to train 20,000 people into a new division, we then need to be able to check that these guys do not become ghost soldiers, that they're there, and that they answer orders. Otherwise, pretty soon we'll go back to the situation we had previously.