I guess if Bush and Rumsfeld had really hoped to reconstruct Iraq (and I now find that dubious, given the troop level they assigned), they might have found a better sub-constractor than Halliburton. Like, say, Hezbollah. Still, to give credit where it's due, Bush has essentially handed what's left of the Iraqi state to a Hezbollah clone in the Shiite south, so maybe the reconstruction will now actually begin - and serve the enemy's propaganda message, rather than ours. And the beat goes on.