No attempts are being made to rebuild the infrastructure for civilian life.
Those military bases do not require a functioning Iraq, since chaos in the cities (occasionally quited by killing a few 10 thousands) would not touch the bases -- after all, there have been only one or two mostly symbolic attacks on the Green Zone. And had political conditions at home permitted it the U.S. could have maintained Can Ranh (sp?) Bay permaently while letting the puppet regime in Saigon be overthrown. Cf. Guantanamo.
The major organs of the u.s. ruling class -- Tribune, NYTimes, Time, Newsweek, ABC, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Party are still strongly behind the occupation in Iraq, but those same organs are increasingly freeing their reporters to turn on Bush & Co. It doesn't seem that the Fitzgerald investigation threatens ruling-class concerns; perhaps the very opposite.
And of course it was mostly leftists over the last few years who most vigorously propounded the ideological cover for maintaining u.s. forces in Iraq -- the "Now that we've done so much damage, we can't just bug out before we at least provide water and electricity etc." argument. That argument will still be as good 5 years from now. With the u.s. troops mostly confined to their impregnable bases, venturing forth only to smash any insurgent force that thretens to establish order, troubles can be balmed on the barbarian Iraqi people while smidgeons of order can be credited to the u.s. forces.
Every snicker at Bush, every argument of the ABBs, every expose of corruption (Haliburton profits), every reference to the "Repugs," every sneer at Kansas, has played into the hands of a ruling class that can now throw Bush to the wolves and smugly exercise control over access to mideast oil. No invasion of Iran. No expansion of the war.
There is no left in the United States, though there are 10s of thousands of committed leftists. There will not be a left until the core of those 10s of thousands realizes deeply the necessity of breaking off from the DP, of seeing that it is the u.s. government, regardless of who sits in the White House, that is the enemy. Cheap potshots at the RP must cease.
Carrol