The New York Times is wondering why exactly Dubya's crew insists on maintaining total control of what's going on in Iraq, and rejecting Kofi Annan's call for multilateral control and a near-term, meaningful transfer of sovereignty.:

Mr. Annan's approach is the wiser one. ... Prolonging unilateral American rule serves no obvious security purpose and guarantees that the United States will remain the primary target of postwar Iraqi resentments.

Perhaps they should consider the advice someone once gave to another few journalists: "Follow the money". Would a multilateral, much less an independant Iraqi authority throw out the Bahraini cell phone operators who were briefly offering service in Baghdad, so they could let an exclusive contract to MCI, a corrupt, but well-connected American telecom firm with no experience running cell phone networks? Would they allow American defense contractors to skim the cream off every major construction project in the country?

Hardly likely.

Doing well by the Iraqis would be nice, but they first have the interests of Halliburton to consider...

I initially wrote that the American contractors were hiring Iraqi subcontractors to do the work, but that may be giving them too much credit...