John Burns: “I think the pressure that has been brought to bear on Mr. Maliki has been very considerable. And I think he was bound to…”

We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem... We are being played like a pawn.

The problem is Iraqi history, Anderson. You have a Shiite community that won power at the polls under American protection, that had waited a thousand years for this opportunity.

How soon will the resistance come? Because there will be resistance at some point, just as a consequence of the basic political arithmetic of Iraq, which is that he cannot afford an open rupture with Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army.

The message of which is you don't control anything. And of course part of that message even perhaps a large part of that message is directed at the Congress in Washington, D.C.