During the Vietnam War, AP's Peter Arnett (who later became famous as CNN's Gulf War I reporter) famously quoted fabricated an anonymous American major saying "'it became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

As the people we hate love in France say, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."

On Monday, Bush and Maliki signed a "U.S.-Iraq Declaration of Principles for Friendship and Cooperation" to plan for the end of our U.N.-backed occupation of Iraq and the beginning of "normalized, bilateral relations between our two countries."

(If you thought Iraq got full "sovereignty" when Bremer left Iraq, I've got the perfect bridge for you...)

Here is one of the key principles:

The U.S. and Iraq have committed to strengthening Iraq's democratic institutions, upholding the Iraqi Constitution

So how exactly do Bush and Maliki plan to do this?

By defying Iraq's democratic institutions and subverting the Iraqi Constitution, as Spencer Ackerman points out.

Take a look at Article 58, Section 4 of the Iraqi constitution. It stipulates that the Iraqi parliament shall ratify "international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority." Whether or not President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki can finagle the deal so that it's not a treaty -- as Lute suggested yesterday -- it most certainly is an "agreement."

And it's hard to see the votes for a two-thirds parliamentary majority.

In May, 144 out of 275 parliamentarians signed a petition calling for a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces.

So just 1/3 of Parliament (92 votes) can kill the treaty -  and 144 are already firmly opposed to the "enduring" (i.e. permanent) presence of U.S. forces in Iraq.

So a major battle is brewing between Maliki's pro-occupation cabinet and Iraq's anti-occupation Parliament, and the U.N. Security Council is smack in the middle of that battle. As Global Policy Forum writes,

If the Security Council accepts the Iraqi cabinet’s request for an unqualified renewal, the Council will deepen the already serious constitutional and political crisis in Iraq. The Security Council would be well-advised to take into account the constitutional authority and political position of the Iraqi parliament and to seek a mandate renewal that would reflect the political realities in Iraq, including overwhelming public support for a timetable for MNF withdrawal. Only such realism can end the violence and prepare the country for reconciliation, towards a peaceful, democratic and fully-sovereign future.

Will the U.N. Security Council heed this warning? I wouldn't bet on it. And how will Iraq's Parliament respond after Maliki and Bush defy their will? We'll find out soon enough.

So much for the Iraqi Constitution. What about the U.S. Constitution?

War Czar Gen. Douglas Lute says Congress does not have to ratify permanent bases in Iraq.

GENERAL LUTE: No, as I said, we have about a hundred agreements similar to the one envisioned for the U.S. and Iraq already in place, and the vast majority of those are below the level of a treaty.

That may (or may not) be true, I haven't done the research. But there is one significant legal difference between Iraq and the other 100 basing agreements - Congress has voted specifically and repeatedly against permanent bases in Iraq, and may soon put such a ban on Bush's desk for his signature.

So what happens if a permanent basing agreement between the U.S. and Iraq violates both the Constitution of Iraq and the Constitution of the U.S.? The mind reels...

All of the parties in this battle are worth watching. Bush thinks he can keep U.S. troops in Iraq forever on his authority alone, while Congress is moving towards attaching ever-firmer conditions to their funds under pressure from ever-angrier voters. Maliki is cutting a deal with Bush to keep himself in power, but Iraq's Parliament is strongly opposed to U.S. troops, and each violent "incident" like Nisour Square increases Iraqi opposition.

In "democracies," pressure that moves up from the people to their legislatures is supposed to change government policies. The question is whether the U.S. and Iraq are true democracies like Australia, or virtual dictatorships like Pakistan and Russia.

Update 1: The Institute for Public Accuracy quotes several experts on this topic, namely Joseph Gerson, Raed Jarrar, and Sameer Dosani.