Lights still off in Baghdad

Regardless of anything we do militarily, you cannot win hearts and minds if ordinary Iraqis, especially in the capital, lack basic necessities.  During the Southwest heatwave last month when it was 116 in Phoenix, imagine no air conditioning.  Iraqis face roughly the same weather extremes, and -- oh, by the way -- bullets are going off around them all day long.

The LA Times wrote that the power situation is getting worse:

Faced with their fifth summer without a regular supply of electricity,Baghdad residents have come up with some novel ways to cool off.

Decades of corruption, neglect and war have left Iraq's electricitygrid on the verge of collapse. Iraq is generating enough power to meetonly half the nationwide demand, and most Baghdad residents are down toan hour or two of electricity a day. The shortfalls are the worst sinceU.S.-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003, Electricity Ministryspokesman Aziz Shimari said.

Compare these numbers with earlier this year, when Baghdad residents had between five and six hours of power each day.  Not good, but a lot better than today.  And they think the situation in Iraq is getting better?

Comments

[Alan Charles]

So why aren't we hearing things like this on cable tv news?
You don't bite the hand that feeds you with all those tax cuts.

[George]

Alan, There's no time to fit stories like this around all the good news coming out of Iraq. I mean maybe if there were a 24 hour news network that did nothing but report news, but we dont have that today.