The years of U.S. war and occupation had taken an enormous toll on Iraq. The “constructive chaos” and “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice so cavalierly proclaimed in 2006 was a nightmare for the people living there. Over a million Iraqis had been killed in the U.S. war and there were large numbers of widows, orphans, and wounded. Although international corporations were supplying oil to the world, the Iraqi people were struggling to survive in the broken country.