Iraq energy infrastructure on last legs

We all remember Paul Wolfowitz telling us in 2003 that Iraq's oil money would help finance the reconstruction.  Four years later, the energy infrastructure is so desperate for funding that it will not be able to sustain itself without more foreign aid:

Iraq's crucial oil and electricity sectors still need roughly $50 billion tomeet demand, analysts and officials say, even after the United Stateshas poured more than $6 billion into them over more than four years.

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration hasfocused much of its $44.5 billion reconstruction plan on oil andelectricity. Now, with the U.S.-led reconstruction phase nearing itsclose, Iraq will need to spend $27 billion more for its electricalsystem and $20 billion to $30 billion for oil infrastructure, accordingto estimates the Government Accountability Office  collected from Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Energy is just one of the pressing problems addressed in the latest GAO report on Iraq.

Comments

[granny]

$50 billion. $500, billion. It doesn't matter. The resources have been stolen by internecine warring. Demand will continue to be supplied according to favoritism and power. No amount of money is going to repair the problem.

That is the hideous cruelty of this frightful action taken ~ there is no repairing the damage we've done.

[Chief Editor: Todd]

That's why, at the very least, we need someone like Bill Richardson as Secretary of State so he can travel around and repair the diplomatic damage that has been caused these last six years.

Granny...you've been around for Reagan and Nixon. If Nixon and Bush were next to one another, who would you say was more corrupt? Who would you say was influenced easiest by others? Who would you say cared less about our constitution?

[granny]

Of the Nixon, Reagan, Bush comparisons I'd have to start by saying: It’s not that easy. The simple saying “one thing leads to another” is a major factor in the outcome we have at hand.

Standing them side by side, I think Nixon would murder Bush, and Reagan would ask everyone in for a drink afterwards, and think up a euphemism for the whole event.

I’d say Nixon was smarter, and a far better diplomat. And I would say Nixon of the two was far more influenced by public opinion. But that was not influence that touched him because he cared for "the people". He was deeply troubled by his own sense of himself and his image; And, his hatred for guys precisely like Bush. Nixon would have loathed George Bush.

Bush on the other hand is more influenced by those he works with.

Nixon wanted a hand in everything, and the last say. Bush is a frat boy. He enjoys the party; likes to swagger; lets the "machine" do the work. Nixon couldn't do that, and hence couldn't pull off the coup. But many around him had the same drive for power and control that Bush/Cheney have, and had other factors been in place I believe they would have carried it just as far.

The members of this administration and the cadre of militant marchers that serves them is far more sophisticated then Nixon's crowd, (as indeed is the technology they have to work with) and I believe their basic instincts are more reprehensible - higher on the scale of man's inhumanity to man. They believe deeply in a class system, an elite, ruling class. Nixon just wanted to show the world that guys like Kennedy and Bush, with all the money and all the advantages, still couldn’t run rough shod over the poor boys. Both were/are firm adherents to the belief that the end justifies the means.

Reagan. I think, was not really interested in the "Constitutional power". He was the “Gipper”, and the tough guy ...held hands with Margaret Thatcher, told Russia to buzz off, dismantled the middle class, closed down government concerns for the less advantaged. But he had others in his establishment who were every bit as dedicated to consolidating power as this crowd today. Oliver North and the Iran Contra affair was a chilling, breathtaking revelation to many of us who listened to those hearings. Those were really bad actors. Still are. I think Oliver North is probably a bigger fascist now, than Bush.

There were actors on both stages: Nixon, Reagan, who not only did not care about the Constitution, but were solidly engaged in circumnavigating it, and ultimately taking it apart. Their reasons may have been different, as their personal goals no doubt were, but the lack of integrity was the same.

In those administrations a great deal of the groundwork was laid for what we have now. (As, also, with Bush-One administration, which made vast advances in the castrating of the national press), among other things.

Bush-Two has been the perfect foil for the accomplishments his administration has made toward consolidating power into the hands of the few. His ego is completely fulfilled by the carnival that surrounds the “head of state”; the “decider guy”. He doesn’t get in the way of the power brokers much, and he’s enough of a buffoon to be derailed if he does get in the way.

The task at hand: to retrieve the country from the internal damage done - which I think we barely perceive as yet, is monumental, and requires real determination, dedication and careful scrutiny of all aspects of our government now; in addition to repairing the international damage and disarray we have caused, and moving both arms of the body forward into the global future.

Who will have the capabilities to take this on?