As time goes by, and the United States fails to bring its five-year-plus occupation of Iraq to an end, the incongruities multiply.

The first is that, even though a Democratic Congress was elected in 2006, it has yet to take action to end the war. Last week it approved another $162 billion with no conditions attached to finance the war, to the great pleasure of President Bush.

The war has now cost $534 billion, with more than 4,100 Americans dead. Democrats in Congress whine that they don't have enough votes to overcome the veto by Mr. Bush of any bill with a withdrawal timetable. What that ignores is that Congress could always pass no new war funding, forcing the Defense Department to pay for it from its regular $515.4 billion appropriation and putting on pressure for withdrawal of the 155,000 U.S. troops.

The Democrats have lacked the courage to take that step, even though the public makes it clear that it wants the war ended and America's attention and resources turned toward meeting needs at home. That's a curious position for Congress to take with elections four months away for all of the House and one-third of the Senate.

Another unusual development is the Army's 696-page report on the 18 months of war that followed the president's declaration in May 2003 that major combat operations were over. "On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign" was issued by the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The study details a number of problems, including lack of planning and preparation, that hampered the military in this key phase.

Finally, the story of oil companies trying to get back into production in Iraq, 36 years after they were nationalized by the Saddam Hussein government, continues to evolve. The no-bid contracts, with ExxonMobil, Total, BP, Shell and Chevron, apparently agreed to by the government of Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki with American advisers behind the scenes, have still not been formally announced.

With gas prices ever rising, Americans might like to see more oil on the market. At the same time, a growing presence of U.S. oil companies in Iraq inevitably mires American forces more deeply there.

The delay in awarding contracts could be due to the Iraqi parliament's failure, so far, to pass a law that would determine how oil revenues are distributed in the country. One reason such a bill hasn't been passed could be that the parliament doesn't want to see control of the oil industry return to the hands of foreign companies.

As the U.S. presence in Iraq drags on, it is hard to say what is worst -- the reluctance of Congress to force the beginning of a troop withdrawal, the military's grim critique of a war still under way or the long-term implications of foreign companies making a bid for Iraq's oil.