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U.S. Formally Transfers Sovereignty to Iraqi Government

BAGHDAD, June 28 - Sovereignty was formally handed to an Iraqi interim government at a low-key ceremony in Baghdad on Monday morning, two days earlier than expected.

Reuters correspondent Alistair Lyon, who was at the ceremony, said it was attended by Paul Bremer, the outgoing U.S. governor of Iraq, and top Iraqi government officials.

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Origanally posted by Sol System
"doing nothing to repair the damage done"

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Actually, the 'damage that resulted from the war' (mostly looting!) has been repaired and more (there is still more work to be done to get it up to high-not-just-Saddam standards, though). The main problem is the instability, of course.

Doing the transfer two days before the scheduled date was actually a smart move. It's nice to see a glimmer of intelligence every now and then from our otherwise idiotic leaders (though I supported the idea of the war, pretty much everything about it was done blatently improperly - and I am not speaking from hindsight!!!).
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 

"...the 'damage that resulted from the war' (mostly looting!)..."

Yeah, I'm sure looting caused so much more damage than those big-ass bombs.

"...has been repaired and more..."

Is that why they only get about eight hours of electricity a day? In the summer. In the desert.

"Doing the transfer two days before the scheduled date was actually a smart move."

I'm actually going to be not-sarcastic for this one. I disagree. Bushco are already untrusted, even in this country. Far more so over there. Changing the plans for the "handover" at the last minute, without any warning... it just looks far too suspicious. Even if (and we're talking, like, 0.01% chance here) they did this for actual benevolent purposes, they did it, like everything else, completely wrong. The last thing they need to be doing is saying "Surprise! We said one thing, then did something else! Again!".
 

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Posted by Neutrino 123 (Member # 1327) on :
 

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Originally posted by TSN:
Yeah, I'm sure looting caused so much more damage than those big-ass bombs.

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Originally posted by TSN:
Is that why they only get about eight hours of electricity a day? In the summer. In the desert.

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It's not nice (though slowly improving). However, relativisticly speaking Iraq has roughly the same power as before the war. An interesting point that has caused resentment in Baghdad is that the power is now more evenly distributed across the countryside, so though many areas get more power, Baghdad gets less.

It's true that Bush is very untrustworthy, but I don't think this power transfer will cause more harm. It does not strike me as the type of thing that would arrouse suspision (what is the ulterior motive?). Iraqis seem to agree from the few news articles I've read.

On another note: does anybody know the murder rate in the Sunni triangle as compared with other areas of the globe?
 

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Posted by Veers (Member # 661) on :
 
Well, last year, there were 600 murders in August alone in Baghdad. That should give you some idea.
 

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Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
 
So its almost as bad as your typical US inner-city ghetto. *bam!*
Sorry, couldn't resist.
 

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Posted by Nim the Fanciful (Member # 205) on :
 
Neutrino 123: "Looting did cause more harm then the bombs. Take hospitals, power grids, and sewage systems for example."

They stole the power grids and looted the sewers? What valuable things did they have in their old Mesopotamian sewers? Was it like those sewers in Diablo II, Act II (desert town)? With treasure chests, shrines and shiny swords to be stolen? And fetid corpses stashing amulets?

Jokes aside, shoarleaf the power grids and sewage systems must be more vulnerable to bombing than looting??
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
Shoarleaf?

Look, in Sweden the closest thing to looting you have is a melee when it emerges that due to Ikea's lax stock-checking, supplies of Hrulsta occasional tables are dangerously low. Serious looters will rip the wires and cables out of the walls to sell the copper for scrap. They steal everything. At least after being bombed the stuff is still there and might be repairable.
 

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Posted by Ultra Klackrent Zlatan Magnus (Member # 239) on :
 
"OH MY DE SEDIN TWINS ARE PLAYING TOGEDER! LET US GO AND MAKE SOME HAVOC!"

"FOR DOLPH!"

And then someone gets hurt.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 

"At least after being bombed the stuff is still there and might be repairable."

I'm not sure it works that way. I mean, if looters steal the stuff inside the buildings, you just replace the stuff (even if it is, say, the wiring). On the other hand, once a building has been bombed, chances are you're going to have to clear away the rubble and rebuild the whole thing.
 

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Posted by Neutrino 123 (Member # 1327) on :
 
It can work both ways depending on the exact situation.

quote:

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Originally posted by Nim the Fanciful:
Neutrino 123: "Looting did cause more harm then the bombs. Take hospitals, power grids, and sewage systems for example."

They stole the power grids and looted the sewers? What valuable things did they have in their old Mesopotamian sewers? Was it like those sewers in Diablo II, Act II (desert town)? With treasure chests, shrines and shiny swords to be stolen? And fetid corpses stashing amulets?

Jokes aside, shoarleaf the power grids and sewage systems must be more vulnerable to bombing than looting??

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Sorry, I havn't played Diablo II , but the situation was probably more akin to the Catacombs in some regions anyway.

Take powertowers as an example. ~100 of them were destroyed ny bombing, but several hundred were destroyed by local Iraqis that didn't want their newfound power to get sent back to Baghdad (I suppose this is pillaging rather then looting, though, so replace my previous post with pillaging, which can include looting!).

I'm less familiar with the sewage example, but would assume that it was not targeted by the USAF, though there might have been some side damage in it. Looters, on the otherhand, took important pumping equipment and such.

I mentioned the murder rate remembering having heard about it previously, but this is an area where statistics can be massivly distorted. The different posts inspired me to look this up on google, and it is a mess. Even the Washington D.C. murder rate is reported differently sometimes!
 

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Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 

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Originally posted by TSN:

"At least after being bombed the stuff is still there and might be repairable."

I'm not sure it works that way. I mean, if looters steal the stuff inside the buildings, you just replace the stuff (even if it is, say, the wiring). On the other hand, once a building has been bombed, chances are you're going to have to clear away the rubble and rebuild the whole thing.

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Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
Electrical power and working sewage treatment are sure to return.

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Iraq's basic services worse now than before war, GAO says

WASHINGTON � In a few key areas � electricity, the judicial system and overall security � the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released yesterday.

The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings:

� In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.

� Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with $10 billion more about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations.

� The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts.

� The new Iraqi civil-defense, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped.

� The number of what the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) called significant insurgent attacks skyrocketed from 411 in February to 1,169 in May.

The report was released the same day the CPA's inspector general issued three reports that highlighted serious management difficulties at the CPA. The reports found that the CPA wasted millions of dollars at a Hilton resort hotel in Kuwait because it didn't have guidelines for who could stay there, lost track of how many employees it had in Iraq and didn't track reconstruction projects funded by international donors to ensure they didn't duplicate U.S. projects.

Both the GAO report and the CPA report said the CPA was seriously understaffed for the gargantuan task of rebuilding Iraq. The GAO report suggested the agency needed three times more employees than it had. The CPA report said the agency believed it had 1,196 employees, when it was authorized to have 2,117. But the inspector general said CPA's records were so disorganized that it couldn't verify its actual number of employees.

Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers

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Via Atrios
 

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Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
 
Here is a graphic that goes with the above story.


 

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Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Jay the Obscure:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
Electrical power and working sewage treatment are sure to return.

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Iraq's basic services worse now than before war, GAO says

WASHINGTON � In a few key areas � electricity, the judicial system and overall security � the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released yesterday.

The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings:

� In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.

� Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with $10 billion more about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations.

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Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
Yes, things DO suck.
I'm sure they're not as bad as anything post-WWII Japan or Germany, but they're definitely still worse off for the adverage Iraqi than pre-war.

Still, power will return and things will (if the new government stands and becomes a real trading partner with the UN countries) get much better (given time) than before.

As to the graphic showing power usage, I'd bet that Saddam's palaces never went without power.
Any of them.
Ever.

It's hard to be optimistic with Bush in power, but I do forsee things getting much better for the common Iraqi than ever before.
It'll take a lot of time and effort on everyone's part though: scumbags targeting their own countrymen that try to make life better-judges- leaders-doctors, etc., all undermine their own standard of living.

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BRICKS, MORTAR AND MONEY
Reality Intrudes on Promises in Rebuilding of Iraq


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More than a year into an aid effort that American officials likened to the Marshall Plan, occupation authorities acknowledge that fewer than 140 of 2,300 promised construction projects are under way. Only three months after L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator who departed Monday, pledged that 50,000 Iraqis would find jobs at construction sites before the formal transfer of sovereignty, fewer than 20,000 local workers are employed.

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From the start, refurbishing Iraq's dismal infrastructure and creating a thriving market economy were promoted by Bush administration officials as pillars of the American-led invasion � "the perfect complement to Iraq's political transformation," in the words of Mr. Bremer.

But more than a year later, supplies of electricity and water are no better for most Iraqis, and in some cases are worse, than they were before the invasion in the spring of 2003.

Repairs of three giant wastewater treatment plants in Baghdad, for example, are weeks or months behind, while water supply systems in the south of the country are months or even years away from functioning properly. Unrepaired bridges continue to create monstrous bottlenecks in many parts of the country.

For Iraqis, the delays have bred frustration and anger. Recent interviews in the upscale Baghdad neighborhood of Harethiya suggest that the electricity woes have, among other things, created a nation of insomniacs, sweltering in their apartments through oppressive nights.

James Glanz and Erik Eckholm, The New York Times

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In perhaps the greatest technical success, oil exports have been restored to their prewar levels, bringing in money that will pay the national budget.

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Originally posted by Jay the Obscure:
As far as Iraq goes, I think that over time things will get better. I think that the situation may improve quicker if we remove the people that currently make Iraq policy from positions of power.

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You know, it's almost fun to watch you go off the deep end.

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Endlessly harping on the worst aspects of an already fucked up situation while ignoring any progess is no better than FOX only highlighting minor improvments.

We're all already against Bush getting re-elected anyway, you know.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 

"But to believe that things wont get better is to concede defeat while a lot of people are working to make things better..."

Reporting the bad things (which are the majority, or that matter) is what motivates people. If you point out all the problems, people will say "those need to be fixed". If you keep saying "looking at all the great things", people will say "oh, well, things are fine, so I guess we can ignore it". Jay never said there was absolutely nothing good in the entire state of Iraq. But the bad shit so ar outweighs the good, that the bad is what needs to be focused on.

"At least with the oil flowing (and presumably selling to other countries) they'll be able to assist in the rebuilding themselves."

That may be true. But it's also how those in charge want people to think. They point to the oil and say "this is good for Iraq and we made it happen; aren't we so awesome?". However, someone smart would look at it and say "so, the only thing you've done that benefits Iraq is the thing that benefits you, too?".
 

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Posted by Neutrino 123 (Member # 1327) on :
 
On the matter of power supply, I've found contradictary information, but they are all roughly the same (the dates of the articles have an effect too). Here are some URLs:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/GoodMorningAmerica/Iraq_anniversary_electricity_040314.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5172457/
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=345&printmode=true

I don't think any of these are as bad as the previously posted article states (though the recent surge in attacks may have decresed output by a little). An potentially interesting point of the power map is the Kurdish areas (north and northeast area). These were pratically independent before the war and they are still largely self-governing. Why then, do they have such a great power loss?
 

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Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
 

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Originally posted by TSN:
Jay never said there was absolutely nothing good in the entire state of Iraq.

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....Danielle Pletka, who heads up the AEI national security shop, speaks for the defense:

"It's far better to live in the dark than it is to run the risk that your mother, father, brother, sister, husband or wife would be taken away never to be seen again," Pletka said.

Fair enough. On the other hand, it's not so pleasant to run the risk that your mother, father, brother, sister, husband or wife is going to be blown up, shot, or kidnapped never to be seen again either. Without wanting to minimize the horrors that Saddam inflicted on his opponents, it's very hard to underestimate the value of basic day-to-day security. Perhaps more important, the fact that the Ba'ath regime was awful is really no excuse for the CPA and the Bush administration to have made such a hash of their own efforts to run things. After all, Saddam wasn't trying to rule in an enlightened and beneficent way. Bush and Bremer want us to believe that they were. That calls for them to be held to something of a higher standard.

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quote:

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Originally posted by TSN:

"At least with the oil flowing (and presumably selling to other countries) they'll be able to assist in the rebuilding themselves."

That may be true. But it's also how those in charge want people to think. They point to the oil and say "this is good for Iraq and we made it happen; aren't we so awesome?". However, someone smart would look at it and say "so, the only thing you've done that benefits Iraq is the thing that benefits you, too?".

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