No Electricity Until 2013!

[Jcrowley]

No Electricity Until 2013!

The Associated Press reported today that “Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad….. won't be accomplished until 2013,” quoting U.S. officials.

I couldn’t link to the story at the time of writing this entry, because I got it from a wire service that requires subscription. So, I think you can wait until it is in newspapers and read it.

The news didn’t surprise me, but it did strike me that they come out and say this now. In a time when all the efforts are said to focus on quelling violence in Iraq, especially in Baghdad, and bringing Iraqis the hope back of a better future, I don’t think this news is the right thing to say now.

The story talked about how much power the Baghdadis get now. “In January, it was 4.4 hours; in February, it was 5.9,” the story said. That isn’t true! I talk to my family every morning and they’ve been telling me that my neighborhood, which is a hardcore Sunni neighborhood, has been getting ONE hour of electricity per day and for months now!

http://twentyfourstepstoliberty.blogspot.com/2007/03/no-electricity-until-2013.html

[Taverner]

1. They fucking HAD power before we invaded...

Geeeesh!

[hatrack]

2. So the 4.4 hours, 5.9 hours - they're just averages . . .

My, just when I thought things couldn't SUCK anymore over there than they already are.

It's like the whole country's going backward in time.

[Monkeyman]

4. Remember Cheney said we will bomb them back to the stone age

[TheMadMonk]

15. And whar's the bet the Green zone ...

... with its own 24/7 power supply is factored into that equation.

[karlrschneider]

3. Why would those savages need electricity? They're just brown people who live

over our oil. And where the hell are the flowers they were supposed to throw?

:grr:

[walldude]

5. Freeps kept saying they wanted to bomb them back to the

stone age. Looks like they managed to do it.

[robinlynne]

6. I have a funny feeling that if we give the country back to the Iraquis, they will

have electricity.

[bdamomma]

7. Iraqis have no water either. what a despicable situation.

[Monkeyman]

8. And they wonder why they are fighting back

[Jcrowley]

9. After Bush 1's

invasion (Desert Storm-tidy isn't it?) it took the Iraqi people, with sanctions, only a few months to get full electricity going.

[BayCityProgressive]

10. you guys are such frickin ingrates

they can vote now, they got rid of a tyrant that gassed his own people...and your worried about electricity?
























:sarcasm:

[Arkansas Granny]

11. I can't remember now where I heard it, but in the past few days I

heard the same assessment of full power back by 2013. The Brookings Institute has an Iraqi index that is updated twice weekly that has some figures on electrical output in Iraq. Check page 30.

http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf

There's a lot of info in this report including casualty figures, employment figures and opinion polls conducted in Iraq.

[Psephos]

12. Thanks, the index you cite is a fantastic resource. n/t

[kestrel91316]

13. If we get the hell out now, it probably will be on by 2009.

That is, if we don't sabotage the power grid and stations on the way out...............

[Catherine Vincent]

14. I'll bet they have electricity in the Green Zone!

[GreenZoneLT]

16. Well, yeah, kinda.

We're on generator power AND city power, but we don't rely on the city power, because it frequently cuts out. Most Baghdadis are in a similar but worse boat; they get one or more hours a day of city power, and the rest of the time they use the "generator man" in their neighborhood with the gas-powered generator, who sells them power as they need it. It's totally screwed-up looking, how the electrical cables are draped along the street in these huge bundles of different colors.

In defense of the guys who really are trying to improve the power, there is a lot more power being generated now, but much of it's going to parts of Iraq that NEVER had power when Saddam ruled, rather than Baghdad. And there's been about a 70 percent increase in power demand, because people have bought fridges and satellite dishes, which were unavailable or illegal before the war.

Not to say things haven't been hideously mismanaged, but it's not that nobody's doing ANYTHING to try to fix the power situation. There are a lot of people working very hard on that, with insufficient resources and a basically impossible job considering the political/military environment.

2013 is when they estimate the entire country would have 24-hour electricity, which certainly has never existed in Iraq before. Even Baghdad had regularly scheduled rolling blackouts when Saddam was in charge.

[LynnTheDem]

17. So the Great USA can't do in 10 years what Saddam did in 6 weeks.

The people of Iraq should send their "debt of gratitude" personally to George W. bUsh.

[Hubert Flottz]

18. I can see why the Iraqis are so overjoyed about being invaded

and plundered!