Here's one possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible.

Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again while the occupation and resistance grew ever more deadly.

“A clear majority of Iraqis want American troops to leave,” Klein said, referring to the results of the January 30 elections. “The Left should be echoing the demands we’re hearing from Iraq.”

They watched the U.S. military build permanent installations in Saddam Hussein’s former palaces and read that occupation forces lost $8.8 billion in Iraqi oil money.

Indeed, increasing violence allowed U.S. administrators to delay national elections that had been scheduled for early November 2003. The delay also gave them time to “systematically lock in” their new economic policies, draft a constitution, and appoint Iraqi government leaders

It was only after I had been in Baghdad for a month that I found what I was looking for. I had traveled to Iraq a year after the war began, at the height of what should have been a construction boom, but after weeks of searching I had not seen a single piece of heavy machinery apart from tanks and humvees.