"During [Paul Bremer's] first four months on the job, 109 U.S. soldiers were killed and 570 were wounded. In the following four months, when Bremer?s shock therapy had taken effect, the number of U.S. casualties almost doubled, with 195 soldiers killed and 1,633 wounded. There are many in Iraq who argue that these events are connected - that Bremer's reforms were the single largest factor leading to the rise of armed resistance."

So writes Naomi Klein in Year Zero, a remarkable and readable piece about the turmoil in Iraq from an economic perspective. She explains how an experiment in creating a multinational capitalist paradise backfired, resulting instead in a violent insurgency.

"It's quite an accomplishment: in trying to design the best place in the world to do business, the neocons have managed to create the worst, the most eloquent indictment yet of the guiding logic behind deregulated free markets."

From this one perspective, many of the problems facing Iraq today were caused by simple, unfettered greed.