The Los Angeles Times' reporter T. Christian Miller has an extremely disturbing story about the situation in Iraq in Tuesday's paper. In "U.S. Contractor Pulls Out of Reconstruction Effort in Iraq" Miller writes that the prospect of hundreds of millions of dollars can't even keep one company in Iraq.

For the first time, a major U.S. contractor has dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq, raising new worries about the country's growing violence and its effect on reconstruction.

Contrack International Inc., the leader of a partnership that won one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded this year, cited skyrocketing security costs in reaching a decision with the U.S. government last month to terminate work in Iraq.

"We reached a point where our costs were getting to be prohibitive," said Karim Camel-Toueg, president of Arlington, Va.-based Contrack, which had won a $325-million award to rebuild Iraq's shattered transportation system. "We felt we were not serving the government, and that the dollars were not being spent smartly."

If companies are turning down hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts, the situation in Iraq must be far worse than previously reported. I'm not sure how this story will affect the views of most Americans, but this blogger is now much more skeptical about American chances in Iraq.