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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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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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Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
-Aeschylus, Agamemnon