Can you help me put this into context?

An example from Krugman's column:

Quote:

So why is power scarcer than ever, almost three years after Saddam's fall? Sabotage by insurgents is one factor. But as an analysis of Iraq's electricity shortage in The Los Angeles Times last month showed, the blackouts are also the result of some incredible missteps by U.S. officials.

Most notably, during the period when Iraq was run by U.S. officials, they decided to base their electricity plan on natural gas: in order to boost electrical output, American companies were hired to install gas-fired generators in power plants across Iraq. But, as The Los Angeles Times explains, "pipelines needed to transport the gas" - that is, to supply gas to the new generators - "weren't built because Iraq's Oil Ministry, with U.S. encouragement, concentrated instead on boosting oil production." Whoops.

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Let's not remind Bushie of all the billions of reconstruction money that simply disappeared or was wasted.

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Did you read the last article I posted?

Quote:

The problem is one of both politics and technology. The generation of electricity is the responsibility of the Iraqi minister of electricity. The exploitation of natural gas is the province of the oil minister. The two would have to collaborate to re-convert the turbines to natural gas, and thus far the government has shown little interest in exploiting the vast stores of the resource.
"There was a lot of money given to them to do gas development and it didn't happen," a US official said.

Iraqi engineers believe the pressure from natural gas helps force the oil out of the ground. Drawing off the natural gas, Iraqi officials reason, will make it much harder to pump up crude oil -- which in many places gushes out from the ground because of sheer natural pressure.
"I've said just capture and give me what you flame off (the wells in the south), and that would be enough," a US official said. So far the answer has been no. The turbines grind on, inefficiently and periodically breaking down.

Krugman is a fine person, but he should hardly be your sole source of information relating to this issue.

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If that's the case, it was stupid to make the initial decision. Doesn't disprove my point at all, which is that the U.S. has mishandled this at the highest levels. Easy? Of course not.

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The second article that McGentrix posted goes into a lot of the "why" things are not working.

I think "reasonable" takes on a completely different context there.

I remember one story my brother told me (and I'll probably get something wrong so if I do blame my faulty memory and not him) about tempers flaring over the fact that sewage was backing up throughout the city. The goal was to get the pumps working at the water treatment plant. There weren't any parts to fix it.

My brother and his group were occupying houses in a "very suburban America" type neighborhood where each house had it's own generator. They decided to move all of those generators to the sewage treatment plant to get the pumps working.

So people who knew what they were doing had to be found and the generators had to be disconnected and they had to be loaded and transported then someone who knew what they were doing at the other end had to get everything working again.

And while all of this was going on the military guys no longer had any electricity in their "suburban American type" neighborhood so communications were effected and so on and so on and so on and so on.

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Oh it's a mess, to be sure.

I still think it's reasonable that people at the highest levels figure these things out. Electricity is basic. Find out if they can do natural gas before they put all their eggs in that basket.

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Yes, the mishandling of money is a very serious issue.

Do you know, blueflame, how much has gone missing? I read a disturbing article the other day regrading how money was just laying around. I'll have see if I can find it.

I agree completely that things should have been done much, much better, soz. Electricity is not only basic but such a furious point of contention that the new article saying that it will not be fixed is very alarming.

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boomerang, I doubt we'll ever know how many billions vanished. We do know that when Bremer was running the show that 8.8 billion disappeared. That's a lot for starters. "Audit Shows $8.8B Missing in Iraq
Friday, August 20, 2004"
STORIES BACKGROUND
Reports: Billions in Iraqi Money GoneOil-for-Food Investigation Wants Answers From BremerDems Dissatisfied With Independent Iraq Auditors
WASHINGTON ?- A soon-to-be-released audit will show that at least $8.8 billion in Iraqi money that was given to Iraqi ministries by the former U.S.-led authority there cannot be accounted for, FOX News has confirmed.

And three senators want to know where the cash is.

The draft audit by the Coalition Provisional Authority's (search) inspector general chastises the CPA ?- formerly led by L. Paul Bremer ?- for "not providing adequate stewardship" of at least $8.8 billion from the Development Fund for Iraq. The audit is not expected to be released for at least two or three more weeks, possibly longer.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,129489,00.html

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I remember that, blueflame.

That is a whole lot of money.

A bit off topic but I was thinking about this in relataion to Hurricane Katrina today.

I was visiting family in Texas when that happened. My sister is on the board of the Red Cross in her city and we spent some time working at the shelter.

It was batshit disorganized but everyone was really trying hard to get things done.

The "City" was responsible for most things but nobody knew that so everyone was coming to the Red Cross for help. The RC had no authority to help so they had to refer people back over to the City.

The City people didn't know what to do so they suggested asking the RC.

The frustration faced by these evacuees was downright amazing.

But you know, we WERE trying to HELP but helping was hard because one hand didn't know what the other was doing or even supposed to be doing.

And we had electricty and clean water and shelter and food and communications (sort of) and a gazillion volunteers and everything else you think you'd need. It was still chaos.

When I imagine a whole country dealing with such things while bullets and bombs are flying around and a group of people are trying to thwart you every step of the way....

<sigh>

... it is just unimaginable to me.

In both cases, better awarness and planning and response were needed.

But even when things DID start happening, when people started trying to make things happen, it was still so incredibly difficult.

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sozobe wrote:

Oh it's a mess, to be sure.

I still think it's reasonable that people at the highest levels figure these things out. Electricity is basic. Find out if they can do natural gas before they put all their eggs in that basket.

Seems like basic problem solving. Piss-poor decisions like that wouldn't make it to implementation here, so why there?

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Because the money was being handed out like water - cheaper than water - in Iraq. Someone made a killing off of it.

Cycloptichorn

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[quote="Boomer, musing over the 8 billion dollars the U.S. Government "misplaced" in Iraq,"]That is a whole lot of money.[/quote]

Reading Boomer's words reminded me, for some reason, of the story of the actress who, when told of the Holocaust casualty count, replied, "That's a lot of people."

Who was that actress?

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GWB was not into details. He was for simple summaries so he could make decisions. Simple solutions for simple minds.

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From what I hear and read the money was never going to be spent to rebuild Iraq It was a scam from the get go. Which is sad because it just means more violence and death on both sides not to mention our lose of credibility in the worlds eyes.

Imagine if we were able to but Iraqis to work building their own country. Instead Iraqi contractors were locked out of the bidding process and American contractors tied in with defence contractors and the Bush administration were given the contracts at unreasonably elevated cost then on top of that we had to pay for security cost for these far overpriced contractors with security company that is also tied in with the "military industrial complex" if you want to call it that. Rebuild Iraq my ass. It was just another way to get more money no matter the cost and it works. They must lagh their ass off on the way to the bank while others here struggle to live comfortable and kids in Iraq search for water waiting for a terrorist group to come along and promise them a better future showing them Americans never cared about the people or rebuilding Iraq.

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McGentrix wrote:

It's a shame that Iraq doesn't have an "easy" button that can be pressed and have all the problems fixed over-night.

Overnight??????? WTF??????????

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That one was pretty straightforward, Roxxxanne. It'd be nice if it were easy to fix the mess in Iraq. It's not.

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Is there not a person in the world wishing for an "easy" button?

I seem to recall talk at the beginning of all this that Iraq would be able to fund it's own reconstruction.

Obviously that was short-sighted and I'm sure it had an impact on the lack of planning and problems that we're seeing today (and yesterday, and tomorrow).

Wasn't that the original plan -- We'd overthrow Saddam, liberate the people and that they would have the funds to rebuild and upgrade their infrastructure while living in their newly minted democracy?

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Oh, I'm pretty sure they had the money, just nobody to responsibly manage it.

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I frequently hear stories like the one Boomerang posted (about her brother's experience with the generator) - some are told for their amusement factor and some just to vent the daily frustrations. So far the frustrations seem to be with the disrespect Saddam had for the people of Iraq, though.

For instance, I wasn't aware that in pre-war Iraq, there were both scheduled and unscheduled power outtages on a daily basis. People died on OR tables because of power losses and because the generators couldn't be fired up in time.

The only day of the year that power was available 24/7 was on Saddam's birthday - and although the hardships they still face are unimaginable to us, they can now openly complain about them without fear of being killed.

Most of the complaining I hear from those that are working on projects to correct the problems deal not so much with poor pre-war planning, but with the lack of reporting about how much has been accomplished so far.

I don't know how long it took to reconstruct the countries ravaged by WWII and I don't know if they faced similar security issues.

I wonder, though, if things are so bad in most of Iraq that they'd want Saddam back. Perhaps, some would.

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I certainly hope that I didn't give the impression that my brother told this story for anyone's amusement or to vent his own frustrations.

I suppose that's the danger of pulling something out of the context of the conversation.

The conversation was really more about the complexity of getting things done and an attempt to dispel the notion that Iraqis were/are all living in squalid mud huts.

But that's beside the point.

Isn't it true that in apres-war (if we can call it that) Iraq that there are both scheduled and unscheduled power outtages on a daily basis?

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Can you help me put this into context?

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