The relationship between Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White House has begun to fray at the edges. The Bush administration has become frustrated with al-Maliki's pro-US regime. Ironically, the latter is looking about as lame duck and incompetent as Bush and his government.

Bush is approaching the end of his two-year presidential term but his legacy is in tatters. He'll leave the White House known only for his lies and deception for going to war with Iraq a war that looks more and more unlikely to be won by the Americans.

Clearly a military strategy has failed. And political solutions are what are needed to end the Iraqi carnage. But they're virtually non-existent, too.

The blame game has started sometimes overtly, mostly quietly. One gets stronger whiffs of a seriously troubled marriage between Washington and Baghdad through media's reports on the war. From the White House's frontline, press briefings have turned increasingly terse but remarkable.

They're remarkable not because the White House Press Corp is now putting questions to the White House that makes Bush uneasy and look sloppy and desperate. It's because that uneasiness reveals a latent discomfort the Bush administration has been feeling about the al-Maliki government's resolve to bring stability inside Iraq.

Washington doesn't only think al-Maliki is incompetent but knows that he is incompetent.

Bush's last roll of the dice is an incredibly foolish one. The idea that a "surge" of another 21,500 American troops deployed throughout Iraq, to join the roughly 140,000 soldiers already there, will bring the violence to an end is ludicrous.

Worse, there are no concrete plans drawn up by either the US Strategic Command in the Middle East or, indeed, in the White House on precisely what the extra troops will do in Iraq.

It seems more likely that the "surge" is designed to assuage the frustration Washington has been feeling at not being able to quash the insurgency but especially the growing influence of Iran and Syria in Iraq.

Uncanny timing

The timing of the announcement of a "surge" force is uncanny: it comes against what Teheran calls the "kidnapping" of what the Americans say are Iranian spies who have been fuelling the insurgency throughout Iraq.

Bush also wants deployment of a battery of Patriot missiles in southern Iraq. This is probably designed not at attacking insurgent groups but at Iran, of whom the US and its chief ally Israel have accused of supplying deadly Kassam rockets to Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories and the likelihood that many of these may also have found their way inside Iraq to insurgent groups loyal to Iran and Syria, both allies, and to anti-American Shi'ite strongman and cleric Moqtada Sadr and his Mahdi Army.

Al-Maliki, whose regime is littered with Shi'ites and Kurds, and under-represented by the minority Sunni, is battling some 30-odd insurgent groups inside Iraq without any sign that he and his Iraqi security forces are winning the war. So much so US national security adviser Stephen Hadley has publicly questioned if not censured al-Mailiki's ability to lead a government that is being increasingly cowed by violent rival militias and, equally, unable to influence Iran and Syria to stop the bloody sectarian violence.

Bush gives al-Maliki the time of day only because al-Maliki is the devil he knows best. Others could turn out to be far worse. Bush is afraid they'd drag American forces into a war in which they'd become too bogged down. It's not something he wants, especially at a time when American public opinion has turned so sharply against the Bush White House and the Republicans of the war, and a Congress now dominated by albeit infighting Democrats.

More weapons

Al-Maliki has not only called for greater US military presence in Iraq to quell the sectarian wars; he now wants Americans to give his security forces more weapons. What's fanciful about al-Maliki's requests is that he has not been able to bring his corrupt and poorly trained police force up to the standards required to manage what is an increasingly unmanageable problem of chaos, disorder and wanton bloodletting in Iraq.

More, neither al-Maliki nor the US-led Coalition of the Willing has made any significant progress in recruiting and training a new Iraqi armed forces. Recruits are picked up from the streets. They sign up because they know they'll be fed and paid a wage. But they soon disappear when sent to the frontline.

And there are questions of the security forces allegiances, many of whom are said to be members of death squads of rival militias.

The battle lines have been drawn deep in Iraq's desert sands, and al-Maliki knows he can't do anything about defeating them. The White House thinks al-Maliki hasn't the guts to do more than his trail of broken promises.

In November last year, after al-Maliki snubbed meeting Bush in Jordan following Stephen Hadley's trenchant criticisms of the prime minister's competence, al-Maliki told journalists that his government's forces would be ready to take control of Iraq by June 2007.

"I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready," al-Maliki said in an interview with ABC News.

That's not all al-Maliki said. He'd also reassured Bush of "the government's resolve to impose the government's authority, bring stability, hold to account outlaws, and limit the possession of arms to the hands of the government."

Television images from Iraq and media reports paint a sharply different picture altogether, as well as what the Coalition of the Willing's commanders are privately and sometimes publicly reporting back to their political bosses.

Neither Washington or London is holding its breath over al-Maliki's latest spiel. And Moqtada Sadr and his Mahdi Army in Sadr City will be snickering at al-Maliki's newest bravado not because Moqtada thinks al-Maliki is all talk but because Moqtada knows that al-Maliki knows that the strongest ally of al-Maliki's increasingly fragile regime is Moqtada himself.

So, too, do the Americans frustratingly.

MANJIT BHATIA is a regular contributor.