And how about that reconstruction effort?

Contrack International Inc has become the first major US contractor to pull out of the reconstruction effort in Iraq, citing security concerns, the Los Angeles Times said.

"We reached a point where our [security] costs were getting to be prohibitive," company president Karim Camel-Toueg said in the Wednesday edition of the paper.

Virginia-based Contrack had won a $325 million award to rebuild Iraq's shattered transport system.

US officials said Contrack's decision to terminate work in Iraq was reached with the US government in November, but had not been publicly disclosed.

[...]

Contrack, the leader of a partnership that won one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded in 2004, was the largest company to pull out of Iraq to date, the officials told the Times.

[...]

[...]

"It's a very bad sign," said Michael O'Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. "If this is how other private companies are thinking, it's a very bad potential warning." [Emphasis added]

Aljazeera article

You don't say?

Oh, and in case you missed it....

The Contrack revelation comes fast on the heels of a potentially controversial legal dispute between a US-based firm accused of setting up sham companies in Iraq and the US government.

According to the 19 December edition of the LA Times, lawyers for Custer Battles security firm argued they could not be sued for a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme in Iraq because the allegedly stolen money belonged to Iraqis, not Americans.

Yessiree. Bringin' those Iraqis the American way.