This is remarkable. I don't even know how to respond to it. 2013? That's six years from now.
__________________________________________________________
Baghdad electricity not till 2013, U.S. says
DAVID WOOD; The Baltimore Sun
Published: March 2nd, 2007 01:00 AM
WASHINGTON – Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad, a key wartime goal toward which the United States has spent $4.2 billion, won’t be accomplished until 2013, U.S. officials said Thursday. Power outages in the Iraqi capital are frequent, leaving residents without electricity for an average of 17 or 18 hours a day.
For most residents without personal generators, that means not just no lights but dead radios, televisions, heaters, washing machines and water pumps.
Army Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh, the senior U.S. military officer overseeing reconstruction efforts, told reporters Thursday via video teleconference that the Iraqi government planned to increase power generation “to catch up with demand” for electric power by 2013, “somewhere in around that area.”
When President Bush announced in January that he was sending additional troops to Baghdad, he said the initiative must go “beyond military operations.” Ordinary Iraqis, Bush said, “must see visible improvements” in their neighborhoods.
Continuing shortages of electricity and other vital government services violate a key provision of the counterinsurgency strategy written by Gen. David Petraeus, the new top military commander in Iraq. That strategy dictates that a government must provide tangible benefits to its citizens to attract their loyalty away from the insurgents.
The United States has poured almost $22 billion into reconstruction projects. But much of the money has been siphoned off for security initiatives such as training and equipping Iraqi army and police units, according to a report in January by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
“It’s critical, because electricity is a key measure of how well the government is providing for its people,” said Kalev Sepp, a retired U.S. Army special forces officer and a counterinsurgency consultant to the U.S. military command in Baghdad.
thenewstribune.com |
