It Looks Like

It's roosting time.

Denouncing what they called repeated acts of violence by American forces against innocent civilians, Iraq's top leaders said today that they would demand that American officials turn over their investigative files on the Iraq deaths in Haditha as they vowed to conduct their own inquiry.

The demand represented a unusual declaration for a new government that remains desperately dependent on American forces to keep some form of order in the country as a resilient insurgency and widespread sectarian violence have pushed it to the brink of civil war.

This reporter may find it an "unusual declaration," but I thought Iraq was now a sovereign nation? So why does Richard A. Oppel, Jr., think it's so unusual?