Water taps run dry in Baghdad

[ProSense]

Water taps run dry in Baghdad

By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer
16 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - Much of the Iraqi capital was without running water Thursday and had been for at least 24 hours, compounding the urban misery in a war zone and the blistering heat at the height of the Baghdad summer.

Residents and city officials said large sections in the west of the capital had been virtually dry for six days because the already strained electricity grid cannot provide sufficient power to run water purification and pumping stations.

Baghdad routinely suffers from periodic water outages, but this one is described by residents as one of the most extended and widespread in recent memory. The problem highlights the larger difficulties in a capital beset by violence, crumbling infrastructure, rampant crime and too little electricity to keep cool in the sweltering weather more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Jamil Hussein, a 52-year-old retired army officer who lives in northeast Baghdad, said his house has been without water for two weeks, except for two hours at night. He says the water that does flow smells and is unclean.

Two of his children have severe diarrhea that the doctor attributed to drinking what tap water was available, even after it was boiled.

"We'll have to continue drinking it, because we don't have money to buy bottled water," he said.

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No water and no electricity!

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. "Let Freedom Reign!"

[TwilightGardener]

2. Good Lord. All we need is a cholera epidemic to make our work complete.

[babylonsister]

3. So nice that we're having such a positive effect over there, isn't it. I can

tell we're making a big difference.

[BOSSHOG]

4. We've been greeted as Exterminators

It is fair to say that Iraq would be better off with Hussein. You'd have to a real fucking idiot who gets his news from limbaugh and who posts on free republic to believe otherwise.

[billyoc]

5. How's the water in the Green Zone?

Could you really sit there in the AC clinking ice cubes while the city around you dies of thirst?

I mean, really, could you? Could anyone?

[Kagemusha]

6. Uh, seriously as an aside, that is not a hard question.

Of course you do. You bless your good fortune and whatever pity you shed for other people, you darn well keep your ice cubes close and your bottled water closer. Keeping healthy is about survival. It's not something that can be made optional just because other people are having it harder. It's why paramedics aren't supposed to blindly charge into dangerous situations. Adding to the victims is no comfort to anyone.

[karlrschneider]

8. Well, that obviously went about 20,000 feet over your head...

:eyes:

[Kagemusha]

11. Not at all. I chose to reply to a rhetorical question not supposed to get an answer.

Because it has an answer, but we're expected to read that and decide that there actually isn't one. In doing so, we are encouraged to view the world as one where human beings behave not like human beings would, but either in accordance or contrary to our prejudices.

[karlrschneider]

12. It wasn't so much a rhetorical question as a philosophical (almost Socratic) inquiry.

However, it most assuredly could be honestly answered, even if the response is less than useful.
Did you mean to say "rather" where you wrote "either"?

[Kagemusha]

13. Yes, I typoed that part as you say.

I'm sorry I'm not exactly an expert in Socratic inquiry. I just view the question as missing the point. It doesn't take an evil person to drink bottled water with ice cubes in the Green Zone. It's not the point.

There was a post on another thread that floated the idea that the Green Zone is sucking up all the electricity and causing the water shortage. My understanding is that the Iraqi grid and the Green Zone's power sources are not compatible and have nothing to do with each other. (And the US wasted a huge amount of effort getting the big Dora plant that's been in the news lately, rebuilt to US standards, guaranteeing that Iraqis would "ruin" them by "misusing" them by trying to use the plant like it was meant for the Iraqi grid.)

Now, rhetorically, blaming the Green Zone directly for the electricity crisis causing the present - and quite serious - water crisis, is the more viscerally satisfying solution, the better emotional response, the better propaganda. It is also false. On the other hand, the Green Zone is very much indirectly responsible for the crisis. That is the less satisfying, less emotional, weaker propaganda response. It is also true.

Which should we prefer here on DU?

[karlrschneider]

14. Let me try again. The guy with the ice cubes is a metaphor.

For the big picture...the contrast between the comfort of the occupiers vs. that of the occupied (subjects?)

I have no idea why (or if) the power grids would be incompatible unless one of them is DC and the other is AC
or if they are both AC with different frequencies - maybe the Iraqi grid is a 50 Hz distribution system?...much of
the world is but there are ways to deal with that. Japan uses both 50 and 60 (in the eastern and western part, respectively) and it doesn't seem to be a huge problem.

Anyway, nobody is actually blaming the Green Zone...we are blaming the people who live in it, and their policies.

[Kagemusha]

15. Actually it probably is something like that (re: the power grids)

I just have long since forgotten the details. My profession is language, not electricity, and I would've last heard about this in detail literally years ago.. as for ways to deal with that, they obviously haven't been followed.

But anyway.

All you're saying amounts to agreeing that yes, we should prefer the stronger more emotional, less factual rhetoric that serves the greater Truth. I'm sorry that I don't do things that way, not even against people I hold in low regard. It's a bad habit, as I see it.

[karlrschneider]

16. Well, I have no quarrel with rhetoric that helps to achieve a goal.

Maybe the keyboard isn't mightier than the sword but it can be a useful tool to those with no other options. I think we are arguing over minutia, though. Are you Japanese?...you don't have to answer if you don't wish to, it's just that the phrasing you use in your posts is a bit different from what I see native English speakers use. Please understand, I mean NO offense...I have many dear friends in Japan!

[Kagemusha]

17. Ah, since you ask

Actually nothing like that. I translate from Japanese into English. I grew up in an English and French bilingual environment. Probably just caught me in a certain frame of mind today.

Anyway, catch you later. Rhetoric aside, no electricity to run water purification is horrid stuff... I really feel sorry for those people. We'll see what happens...

[karlrschneider]

19. Ah, I see...actually I think I had confused you with another DUer who lives in Japan

(I'm the world's worst at recalling names)

And given you translate professionally, that explains your linguistic precision. :D

tres bien, arigato.

:-)

[butterfly77]

10. They could..

look at what they have done already. Its all about being able to say they have won. They will kill,dehydrate or whatever else it takes until there are no more Iraqis and then they can say they have won.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. I do believe under the Geneva Conventions...

it's the occupying power's responsibility to provide water, etc. to civilians.

[karlrschneider]

9. But it's not an occupation, it's a WAR. Didn't you get the memo?

:shrug:

[malaise]

18. Freedom from water

Freedom from electricity
Freedom from limbs
Freedom from health care
Freedom from education
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Freedom! :puke: :puke: :cry: :cry: