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I disagree- I think there are at least some 'ordinary' Muslims who want to see Americans killed (witness news footage not so long ago of women screaming in the streets with exultation at the news, when some were).

These people are so desperate and so powerless that the linkage to the common-sense perception (available easily to us in our comfy chairs), that not ALL Americans are hurting them, and that their woes are not entirely the US' fault, snaps, and they want revenge, pure and simple, on ANY American, however mindless or unreasonable it may appear to an outside observer.

Bimmercat, I'm not sure that the French are as anti-American as you - or Fox News - like to make out!

Just a thought, but wouldn't it make a lot more sense to use Iraqi civillians as contractors rather than shipping in Americans to do the jobs?

It's create less tension, keep the money in the local economy and maybe, just maybe, help foster some kind of relationship between the Iraqis and the Americans.

Simple- it's a brilliant idea, commonsense and blindingly obvious.
But it would deprive Bush's cronies of some moolah.
The same answer applies to foreign investment- had they been willing to share the reconstruction contracts upfront, they'd probably have got the UN mandate in the first place.

To answer Magoo's point, it's hardly a handful, and while I can understand the feelings of those directly involved, I'm afraid that there are more than a few Muslims elsewhere who hate the US viscerally enough to take delight in the death of one of their number. I can only categorise such people as wicked, rather than ill-informed.......hate is such an easy currency.
I agree with Bim that the Muslim community at large has done too little and been less than vocal, in denouncing these extremists.
And your last sentence would have been a great idea, except that (at present) you need the ME's oil more than they need you- and of course you would have to give up driving your huge cars and polluting the atmos with your factory emissions.

Whatever the previous skills-base of Iraq, that option was removed by the invasion's destruction of the logistics and infrastructure sectors.
But every effort should have been made to involve as many Iraqis as possible at as high a level as possible, and as many other nations as possible, instead of just unilaterally deciding to carve it up amongst US firms.
It's called 'consensus-building'.
'American diplomacy': another contradiction in terms?