Sullivan points out this passage in an eyewitness account of the aftermath of the bombing of the Iraqi parliament:

At first, no one could decide who was in charge: the U.S. military, the Iraqi police who actually guard the members of parliament, or the men from Triple Canopy, a private security company based near Dulles Airport in Virginia.

With a bullhorn and sheer force of will, the leader of the local Triple Canopy team, a short thick man in a baseball cap, took charge.

Heavily-armed men from Triple Canopy, mostly Peruvian, escorted every one inside the building into a parking lot ringed with a 10-foot high chain-link fence. This became a holding pen. An American Triple Canopy employee told me that they suspected the bomber may have had an accomplice in the building. Therefore, everyone was going to held and searched.

Peruvian mercenaries in the employ of a private contractor overriding the US and Iraqi authorities.

Is there a functional state left that we can refer to as Iraq?

Is this the transformation Cheney was looking for?

I wish these questions were rhetorical.