Full Electricity In Baghdad 6 Years Off

When the Umited States invaded Iraq, it had a small window to make things right and prove to the Iraqi people that its intentions were indeed noble.

A window of opportunity where there was NO opposition to its presence, NO Insurgency, NOR Sectarian killings.

But, it did the opposite, by:

1. dissolving the Iraqi Armed Force & Security Forces. The same forces who were adept at keeping the lid on different types of criminal activity. Keeping ethinc/secatrian tensions in check.

2. DeBathification of the entire Iraqi government. The same government who knew how to run the country, especially during 2 wars (the Iran-Iraq wars, the occupation then liberation of Kuwait, and during the Genocidal Sanctions).

3. Rebuilding what the US had deliberately destroyed during it's first war with Iraq and the Genocidal Sanctions: sanitaion/sewage, water purification plants, infrastructure, healthcare, education, Jobs, security and electricity, etc.

But now, in its attempt to deal with the electrical factor alone, the U.S. has been an utter failure.

The Baltimore Sun, reported that:

Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad, a key wartime goal toward which the United States has spent $4.2 billion dollars, won't be accomplished until the year 2013, U.S. officials said yesterday, in what others called a significant setback for the new U.S. initiatives to quell Iraq's bloody insurgency.

Power outages in the Iraqi capital are frequent, leaving residents without electricity for an average of 17 or 18 hours a day. For most residents without personal generators, that means not just no lights but dead radios and televisions, heaters, washing machines and water pumps.

Army Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, the senior U.S. military officer overseeing reconstruction efforts, told reporters yesterday via video teleconference that the Iraq government plans to increase power generation "to catch up with demand" for electric power by 2013, "somewhere in around that area."

...The United States has poured almost $22 billion into reconstruction projects in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, intended to provide jobs, health care, education, power and clean water. But much of the money has been siphoned off for security initiatives such as training and equipping Iraqi army and police units, according to a report in January by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

As a result, many of the reconstruction projects are unfinished. But the power problem is the most significant to the war effort.

"It's critical because electricity is a key measure of how well the government is providing for its people," said Kalev Sepp, a retired U.S. Army special forces officer and a counterinsurgency consultant to the U.S. military command in Baghdad.

"People living in Baghdad have to make a choice to support the government or support the insurgency, even if they do that passively," said Sepp, who teaches special forces at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

A key to fighting an insurgency is to convince neighborhood people to provide intelligence on insurgents, Sepp said."Right now it's going the other way - when people see an unusual collection of cars, or people moving around at 2 a.m., they don't report it to the government because the government is not helping them," he said. "They have no stake in the government to balance the retribution they'd suffer from the insurgents" by reporting on them to the government.

Electricity generation in Iraq today is slightly below prewar levels. According to U.S. State Department data, Iraq was producing 3,958 megawatts per month before March 2003, and as of mid-February, production was running at 3,640 megawatts. Baghdad enjoyed 16 to 24 average hours of power per day, and enjoyed an average of 6.7 hours per day in December, 4.4 hours average per day in January, and 5.9 hours so far in February.

Well, it increasingly looks like this below-average "effort," on the part of the US Occupation Authority and its stooges in the Occupied Iraqi Government, is Way Too Little and Much Too Late.

So much for winning the "heart and minds," of the Iraqi's!

Source:

1. "Full Eelectricity In Baghdad 6 Years Off"
By David Wood
Sun Reporter
Originally published March 2, 2007
BaltimoreSun