Bush just pulled the knee strings on his puppet in Iraq, and Nouri al-Maliki did the jig.

The prime minister signed on to a deal laying the groundwork for the long-term presence of U.S. troops there.

Permanent military bases, anyone?

To inaugurate the pact, U.S. troops in Baghdad killed three women on a bus that was approaching a U.S. roadblock.

The arrangement with the Maliki government will ultimately take the place of the U.N.-sanctioned presence of U.S. troops there, which itself is a blot on the U.N.’s record.

And part of the “enduring” relationship that Bush and Maliki laid out in this pact has nothing to do with the presence of U.S. troops, but with the profits of U.S. corporations.

The deal would give “preferential treatment for American investments,” AP reports, adding nonchalantly that this “could provide a huge windfall if Iraq can achieve enough stability to exploit its vast oil resources.”

There’s that dirty three-letter word again—oil, which this war was never supposed to be about but always, in part, was.

Oil and profits are two big reasons why Bush will keep probably more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Those are not legitimate reasons to ask our soldiers to die for, and almost 4,000 of them have done so already.

But at least it’s out in the open now. The crassness, that is.