With friends like these . . .

In an interview with USA Today, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says that he'll take his time about disarming militias in Iraq -- and that a wrong-headed approach by the United States isn't helping matters in the meantime. "We have an inherited problem of the security theory adopted by [the Multi-National Force-Iraq] and how they deal with terrorism," al-Maliki says. "It's a wrong approach. Terrorism and militias -- especially militias -- cannot be dealt with only by using tanks, guns and aircraft. You need security cells that gather information and infiltrate the areas where they operate and uproot them from the inside."