How Baghdad apartment dwellers are getting their water in 117 degree heat

[swag]

Abdul Amir Hussein connects a network of water hoses to apartments in a central Baghdad, Iraq complex Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007. The Baghdad water supply has been severely affected by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations. Iraq's electricity grid could collapse any day because of insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages and provincial officials who are unplugging local power stations from the national system, electricity officials said on Saturday. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)

[malaise]

1. One more Geneva Conventions violation

Who will arrest Bush and Cheney?

[VTMechEngr]

5. Is it really?

It's not the Americans who are doing this to them, their destroying their own infrastructure. This is where self determination of peoples comes into play. Want civilization? Stop blowing up your Infrastructure.

And NO, I don't think we should rebuild their country, we need that money here at home.

[Cha]

9. bushit bombed Iraq and invaded

their country and the Iraqis want them out. It is bushit all the way.

[VTMechEngr]

13. Yes, we did bomb them.

But we didn't do the damage highlighted in the article. That damage was self-inflicted.

Maybe I'm just mad because I've known too many people called back into the army to go to Iraq, but I can't feel anything but contempt for a people who will bomb themselves back into the stone age to force someone out. Its like Afghanistan and Somalia. Just what the hell is wrong with these people?

[Usrename]

41. Self-inflicted?

Do you really think the people in this apartment complex are destroying their own water supply?

[Robbien]

10. What planet are you from

The US during the 12 years of sanctions wouldn't allow any material to come into Iraq which could be possibly used as a weapon. That included all building materials. So of course the infrastructure crumbled.

And before and during this sanction period, bombs made in the USA were continuously dropped on Iraq supposedly hitting WMD's. Yeah, right.

Our warplanes fly over occupied Iraq each and every day since Shock and Awe. These warplanes drop tonnage after tonnage on this infrastructure you oh so casually say is being ruined by Iraqis and Iraqis alone.

Of course you don't believe we should be responsible for rebuilding a country we have bombed back to the stone ages.

Of course you blame the victims.

What do you believe we should be doing with that money "right here at home"? Hand it out in another one of those tax cuts for the uberrich?

[VTMechEngr]

15. No. I acknowledge that the system was in serious disrepair because of us.

But the latest problems that are causing the system to finally near collapse are not our doing. Everytime we try to fix something, they blow it up.


At what point do you just stand back and go WTF?

[Robbien]

17. At what point

do you realize we don't get to say WTF?

We broke it. We overpaid Halliburton to fix it and didn't call them to account when they did a half-assed job or did nothing at all. Then we put out articles such as this saying the problem with the entire system is all the fault of the Iraqis.

I strongly believe this has nothing to do with "insurgents" but the fact that the people paid to fix it just took our money and ran.

[VTMechEngr]

23. We can't fix it. That would just make the war go on and on.

Read the article. They blow up anything we fix. I've had friends come back from service in Iraq and say the same.

If anything we touch to fix gets blown up, just how are we supposed to fix it?

I want us out of Iraq, not staying for 20 years in the vain hope that we can undo the damage while losing lives and going bankrupt.

[Robbien]

26. While we are there

we need to continue to try and fix it. IT IS GETTING HOTTER AND HOTTER AND HOTTER THERE AND THEY HAVE NO WATER.

Read the article they say. Read the article you say.

I say, get someone in there to fix it and fix it right. If you are so worried about some "insurgents/warplanes" blowing it up, then pay some Iraqis to protect what we built.

We say we build something and then walk away and you and the article says it gets blown up. Well we ignore that and say we build something else and walk away again. Its gone/never was. We ignore that and we again say we build something and walk away again. Over and over and over.

What's that definition of stupidity again?

[VTMechEngr]

27. You ask about the definition -

But you want to keep trying anyhow?

The problem is the Bush regime went in, and now we have insurgents, who contrary to the goofy freedom fighter claims, feel its better for Iraqis to have no electricity or water than to allow the Americans to show that they fixed something. You have two choices - Defeat the insurgents, or stop wasting money and lives and get out. And we both know the first is going oh so swell.

The world is not fair, and life is unfair. Yes, our moronic President and his "Yes Men" squad of incompetant fuckups invaded Iraq and started this whole affair, but we can't afford to stay and fix it.

It seems wrong, but we have to leave, if only to save ourselves.

[Robbien]

29. We are not leaving

We were kicked out of our base in Saudi Arabia. We built a billion dollar base in Iraq. We need to keep supplying security for the global uber-rich privatizers in Iraq.

We are not leaving.

It is hotter than hot now and they don't have water.

[VTMechEngr]

30. And I fear you are correct.

[stillcool]

34. Please go here...

http://www.globalpolicy.org/
and read. This site is chock full of information that has been very helpful to me in understanding the various complexities regarding Iraq. Just as an example...

Iraq: Not Civil War, Occupation
By Sami Ramadani
openDemocracy
December 7, 2006
-------------------------------------------------
How it started

Despite suggestions to the contrary, the answer to the first question hasn't changed ever since the United States-led forces occupied Iraq in March-April 2003: a war of bullets and politics between the occupying powers and most of the Iraqi people who want them out. The feelings of the Iraqi people towards the occupation became abundantly clear within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad to United States tanks on 9 April 2003.

According to the BBC, about 4 million people from all over Iraq marched on to Karbala to commemorate the anniversary of Islam's (particularly Shi'a Islam's) most famous martyr, Imam Hussain. The most popular slogans on that march, which was boosted by people from all religions and none, must have sent alarm bells ringing in Washington and London. For several days they chanted Kalla, Kalla Amreeka - Kalla, Kalla Saddam ("No to America, no to Saddam"). If this is how the Shi'a felt, how would the Sunni, not to mention the atheists?!

From that moment on most of the Iraqi people never ceased making their feelings clear towards the occupation. First they used words and engaged in peaceful protests, which quickly led to using bullets too. The latter Rubicon was crossed on 28 April 2003, one week after the march on Karbala, when US soldiers opened fire on parents and children who gathered in front of a primary school in Fallujah demanding the US forces stop using it as an outpost and to allow their children to go back to school. They killed eighteen of them in cold blood and injured about sixty others.

Until the killing of those demonstrators, not a single bullet had been fired at US soldiers in Fallujah or any of the cities north of Baghdad. This was the event that reverberated across Iraq and sparked the armed resistance to occupation. Fallujah being a predominantly Sunni town, and the occupation authorities' having a keen eye for attempting to split the opposition, led to the production of a myth as big as the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) deception that launched the invasion and occupation of Iraq: the fiction that the armed resistance is predominantly Sunni and that they are in fight against the Shi'a.

The US-led forces responded by using even more bombs, bullets, warm words, and money to reverse the popular odds piling up against them. But within six months of the occupation the CIA boldly warned, "the resistance is broad, strong and getting stronger." Despite attempts to muddy the waters of what is going on in Iraq, it is clear that the resistance is even broader, stronger and getting stronger with every passing day.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They do not tell us about the "Salvador option" and the presence in Iraq of US death-squads, trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Israel, nor will they spill the beans (as US generals have started to do).

They do not tell us about the secret militias trained and financed by the US, partly uncovered by the Wall Street Journal (in February 2005), but in any case common knowledge in Iraq.

They do not tell us why the occupying power should secretly smuggle 200,000 Kalashnikovs and tons of explosives into Iraq from Bosnia within one year (2004-05); nor to whom these weapons were supplied.

They do not tell us about the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on covert political operations and the backing of proxy political forces.

They do not tell us about continuing work on building the biggest US embassy in the world in Baghdad's Green Zone embassy (fortress), about the roughly fourteen permanent military bases (including four massive ones) being constructed.

They do not tell us about the post-Abu Ghraib contracting-out of most of the torture to the Iraqi state, the backing of Iraqi state-sponsored violence against civilians.

[Ms. Clio]

35. thanks for your posts

the blame the victim mentality is utterly infuriating.

[VTMechEngr]

38. What is your solution then?

We can't just fix it. They fucking blow it up right afterwards.

[Usrename]

42. If I were dictator we'd leave now and let Bush/Cheney pay reparations.

I believe that this solution is also provided for in international law.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

21. A lot of the problems result from years of sanctions following the First Gulf War

And the civil war and internal conflict in Iraq is ENTIRELY our doing. We destroyed their internal security infrastructure, we disbanded their police force, we disbanded their military and we disbanded their civil order when we implemented the policy of de-Baathification. "But for" the invasion, there would have been no civil conflict, no bombings, no Al Qaeda in Iraq, no sabotage (or at least these things would have gone on on a much tinier scale). This is entirely our baby. It's taking place because we are there and the continued sabotage is a tactic to keep us there and to have Iraq fail, because that keeps up insurgent and Al Qaeda recruitment and it keeps us bogged down in a quagmire.

[malaise]

11. You broke it, you bought it

and yes not providing water for an occupied people is a Geneva Conventions violation.

Who exactly bombed their infrastructure during the invasion?

[VTMechEngr]

14. But this latest damage isn't from 2003.

[Robbien]

28. Oh bull

The damage is there because Iraq is not a free sovereign nation. WE bombed them and placed very restrictive sanctions on them for over a decade. Then we invaded and waged war on the Iraqi nation of families. WE are occupying the country. WE are responsible as long as we have our hands on anything in that country.

IT is theirs. We broke it and we continuously raid and bomb it and rain destruction down on it. Instead of giving it back to them, we kept it. We didn't trust them fired all their security so gangs have taken over.

Now you, this article and this administration are blaming the victims.

[VTMechEngr]

31. Before smearing me, read post 27.

[Robbien]

32. If you discontinue blaming Iraqis

then I am wrong and will apologize.

I love my city. It is mostly safe and secure. If someone from the outside removed our security structure the gangs and special interests would take over and terror and destruction would rule. Would then you blame me?

[TahitiNut]

2. That's what happens when the infrastructure collapses, too.

The deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of Baghdad depicts, in an accelerated way, what we have to look forward to ... except in "America's Green Zones" (wealthy enclaves).

[acmavm]

4. Please excuse me for being 'picky' but the infrastructure didn't collapse.

It was bombed out of existence.

[eleny]

6. I think TahitiNut was referring us back to the bridge collapse in MN

As an example of how things can get for us here in the U.S.

[TahitiNut]

8. RIF

Please try hard to read my post before disputing something I never said.

[acmavm]

I did read it. And when I say 'when infrastructure collapses' I thought you

were being too ambivalent as to the cause. Apparently I misunderstood. Sorry.

[eleny]

3. So many important postings to Recommend today - this is one of them

K&R

[orleans]

7. wow. n/t

[Cha]

12. I lived in 117 degree

heat over in Indio, Ca one year without air conditioning..pretty damn hot under the best of circumstances without having your water messed with.

Are these "insurgents" that the bushits call them..actually freedom fighters?


Edit for grammer :)

[Robbien]

16. Who knows who they are

They could be mercs, freedom fighters, fighters coming in from other countries, or just about anyone.

A lot of damage was done during the twelve years of sanctions, and from US almost continuous bombing, and from uncontrolled looting.

Blaming the average Iraqi for this is just not right.

[Cha]

22. No it isn't! It's bushits

doing..just more shite the world has to endure because of the fascists that have taken over the good ol USA.

[slipslidingaway]

33. Reminds me of this old article

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0808-07.htm

Published in the September 2001 issue of The Progressive

The Secret Behind the Sanctions
How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply
by Thomas J. Nagy

"Over the last two years, I've discovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway.
The primary document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," is dated January 22, 1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens."

[Vincardog]

18. "insurgents" are whom ever the Bushavicks want them to be. Except

they are not and can never be patriots defending their homeland or freedom fighters defending their homes and families against illegal invasion and occupation.

The truth can not be spoken out loud.

[Cha]

24. I looked both words up and guess which one

describes what's happening in Iraq?

Insurgent: a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent
2 : one who acts contrary to the policies and decisions of one's own political party

Main Entry: freedom fighter
Function: noun
: a person who takes part in a resistance movement against an oppressive political or social establishment

[trof]

19. Gives a whole new meaning to 'spaghetti junction'.

Poor bastards.
:-(

[ContraBass Black]

20. Impressive if it works, but sad that it's needed.

[VTMechEngr]

25. I agree its sad.

I had a friend come back and tell me about his experience. He watched new generators get installed at a small power facility and destroyed in just one week. It seems someone didn't like the American supplied generator and drained the oil and put sand into the crankcase.

*sigh*

[liberal renegade]

39. I bet if we left

and gave them the financial support to rebuild, they'd rebuild...

not only would they rebuild, it would stay rebuilt......

[Ms. Clio]

36. K&R n/t

[nam78_two]

37. K&R.nt

[jtrockville]

40. Garden Hoses Aren't Safe to Drink From :(