Iraqis boiling mad over power woes

[floda]

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Power pylons toppled. Fuel pipelines blown apart. Foreign engineers gunned down and yanked out.

Insurgents are stepping up attacks on Iraq's fragile infrastructure even as the U.S. pumps in billions of dollars to rebuild it.


But with electricity in Baghdad flowing at less than half prewar levels and a scorching summer ahead, many Iraqis see the struggle to ensure adequate power as a metaphor for a U.S.-led reconstruction mission gone bad.

"We've seen nothing but empty promises," shopkeeper Raad Ghalib said, pausing to open a warm freezer reeking from 65 pounds of meat trashed after one long outage.

more..

http://www.nwherald.com/MainSection/local/326205243694759.php

[0007]

1. The sign of the times -

"In Baghdad, anger is boiling over as the city of 5 million inches into a summer where temperatures are expected to rise to 120 degrees. On Friday, it was 106.

Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi condemned the violence, saying such strikes had "caused a nationwide loss of power of more than four hours per day."

[Disturbed]

2. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi

This guy better have the best security around him that the American Middle Class can buy. He is a former CIA asset and the Iraqis know it. He is a quisling and this "new" Iraqi Govt. is a US Puppet Regime.

Democracy? Come on, only ignorant Americans would be stupid enough to believe that.

Full Sovereignty?
Throughout the spring, as hundreds died in the spiraling conflict, as Regime bosses applied their hardcore "anti-terrorist" tortures to innocent bystanders raked up in their occupation nets, as Regime mouthpieces prated endlessly of "liberation" and "sovereignty," Bush viceroy Paul Bremer was quietly signing a series of edicts that will give the United States effective control over the military, ministries -- and money -- of any Iraqi government, for years to come, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Bremer has placed U.S.-appointed "commissions" made up of Americans and local puppets throughout Iraqi government agencies; the ministers supposedly in charge weren't even told of the edicts. These boards "will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens," the Journal reports. Any new Iraqi government "will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials."


Earlier Bremer edicts laid the Iraqi economy wide open to ruthless exploitation by Bush-approved foreign "investors"; dominance of such key sectors as banking, communications -- and energy -- is already well advanced. The latest dictates aim to ensure that this organized looting goes on, no matter what kind of makeshift "interim government" the United Nations manage to piece together. Bush's plans to build a Saddamite fortress embassy in Baghdad and 14 permanent military bases around the country are designed to provide the knee-breaking "security" for these lucrative arrangements



http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/05/21/120.html

[pinniped]

3. At least the US got the destruction mission down good...

"U.S.-led reconstruction mission gone bad."

50/50 is an acceptable no?

[mom cat]

4. Bet the air conditioners in the Green Zone are humming along just fine

while the locals can't get enough juice for a fan.

[struggle4progress]

5. Life without electricity is a really royal pain.

I bet we'd have a revolution here if the electricity was cut off.