So is there electric power in Iraq or not?

Wolfowitz and Bremer say they have more than before the invasion...others reporting (including some military people) say it's sporadic and undependable. (WOOOO.........small digression here, Tweety just asked about "bullshit"...I wasn't paying that much attention)...

Ah, it was about the Uraniumgate thing. Wow.

He's talking to Durbin...I'm gonna watch

hhh

That's all I've read they have. No air conditioning, no refrigeration, no elevators.

Subject to daily distress, most Iraqis are not allowed the luxury of even bothering with the political process. Their real, pressing problem is the absence of kharabba - electricity. With temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius and non-stop power cuts, tempers couldn't be hotter. Bremer said that before the war slightly more than half of Iraq's electricity needs were assured. It's not true: there was no substantial lack of power in Saddam's Iraq. Nowadays production is around 3,100MW, which covers less than half of the country's needs. It may be argued whether American bombing spared Iraq's infrastructure this time, but the fact is that high-tension lines south of Baghdad were hit by bombing. At the end of April, the lucrative contract for reconstruction and renovation of Iraq's electricity grid was awarded to the Bush-connected Bechtel Corporation. But nothing has happened so far.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG19Ak01.html
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Chaos and lawlessness have gripped large parts of Iraq following the U.S.-British invasion. The country's civilian population finds itself bereft of jobs and even basic services. Museums, hospitals, universities, power stations, water plants, and telecomm facilities have been stripped bare by looters, leaving the country in dire straits. Several weeks after the end of major fighting, ordinary Iraqis have seen little in the way of benefits from whatever reconstruction is going on. Indeed, the focus of the occupation regime is more on emergency repairs than on a major rehabilitation of Iraq's dilapidated and war-destroyed public infrastructure.1

http://www.guerrillanews.com/war_on_terrorism/doc2470.html

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One question comes up time and time again: Who was worse, Saddam or the Americans?

The ancient cafes have become the pulse of political life in the city, and through a haze of smoke rising from cigarettes and water pipes, men pass the time with talk of the bad old days and what the future will bring. In the Al-Mustansirya cafe, built in 1587 on the banks of the Tigris River and restored in the 1960s, the walls are dotted with old photographs of poets and long-dead Iraqi singer Mohammed al-Qobbanji.

Men play backgammon. Unemployed, like half of the city's population, they mull their future. "There's no work for us, no hope of finding any and NO ELECTRICITY. Just sticking your head out the door at night is a gamble, but we chat and chat," says Faruk Khalil Zada, a 31-year-old former postal worker.

"We haven't got any money, so pretty soon we'll have to eat our own words."

http://gvnews.net/html/DailyNews/alert4910.html
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Kassra and Attashis - "Broken and Thirsty" in Arabic - lies on the very edge of Baghdad and at first sight looks like one of the many sprawling garbage dumps that disfigure the Iraqi capital. It is a forlorn, sun-baked wasteland of crumbling mud huts surrounded by piles of scrap metal and bright green lakes of raw sewage.

On one side, a child is drinking from a broken water pipe fished out of the sewage. On another, a woman is sifting through a heap of rubbish, picking out and emptying the plastic bags. She sells them, she explains, to support herself and her daughter.

http://gvnews.net/html/DailyNews/alert4909.html