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How many billions upon billions of dollars have we spent in Baghdad to
fix the infrastructure?
How about spending those billions here in the US? Maybe we wouldn't
have bridges dropping into the Mississippi.
Water taps run dry in Baghdad By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press
Writer
2 hours, 21 minutes ago
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.
Adel al-Ardawi, a spokesman for the Baghdad city government, said that
even with sufficient electricity "it would take 24 hours for the water
mains to refill so we can begin pumping to residents. And even then
the water won't be clean for a time. We just don't have the
electricity or fuel for our generators to keep the system flowing."
Noah Miller, spokesman for the U.S. reconstruction program in Baghdad,
said that water treatment plants were working "as far as we know."
"It could be a host of issues. ... And one of those may be leaky trunk
lines. If there's not enough pressure to cancel out that leakage,
that's when the water could fail to reach the household," Miller said.
He said that there had been a nationwide power blackout for a few
hours Wednesday night that might be causing problems for all systems
that depend on Iraq's already creaking electricity grid.
He blamed the outages on provinces north of Baghdad and in Basra in
the far south where officials failed to cutback as required when they
had taken their daily ration of electricity.
"It takes a long time to bring the power back up (to the grid's
capacity and demand)," Miller said.
In the meantime, Iraqis suffer in brutal heat. It was 117 degrees in
the capital Thursday, down from 120 the day before. With the power out
or crackling through the decrepit system just a few hours each day,
even those who can afford air conditioning do not have the power to
run it.
Many Baghdad residents have banded together to use power from
neighborhood generators, but the cost of fuel and therefore
electricity is skyrocketing. Diesel fuel was going for nearly $4 a
gallon on Thursday.
As expected in the midst of a water shortage, the cost of purified
bottled water has shot up 33 percent. A 10-liter bottle now costs
$1.60.
"For us, we can buy bottled water. But I'm thinking about the poor who
cannot afford to buy clean water," said Um Zainab, a 44-year-old
homemaker in eastern Baghdad. "This shows the weakness and the
inefficiency of government officials who are good at only one thing -
blaming each other for the problems we are face."
The pace of the mayhem that saw 142 killed or found dead nationwide on
Wednesday tapered off Thursday, but a suicide car bomber slammed into
an Iraqi police station northeast of Baghdad and killed at least 13
people, police said.
Most of the dead were policemen and recruits lining up outside the
station in Hibhib, the same small Sunni town near Baqouba where al-
Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S.
airstrike more than a year ago. The area is considered a stronghold of
both al-Qaida-linked militants and Saddam Hussein loyalists.
Fifteen were wounded in the attack, a police officer said on condition
of anonymity out of security concerns.
A total of 58 people were killed or found dead across the country
Thursday, according to police and hospital and morgue officials.
The U.S. military announced three more soldier deaths: two killed in a
mortar or rocket attack Tuesday, and another killed in a roadside
bombing Wednesday. At least 3,659 U.S. military personnel have died
since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an
Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday he is more optimistic
about improvements in Iraqi security than he is about getting
legislation passed by the bitterly divided government.
"In some ways we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust
and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on
legislation," Gates said.
His remarks came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party asked
the country's largest Sunni Arab bloc to reconsider its withdrawal
from government to save Iraq's national unity government.
All six Cabinet ministers from the Iraqi Accordance Front quit al-
Maliki's Cabinet a day earlier to protest what they called the prime
minister's failure to respond to a set of demands.
Among them were the release of security detainees not charged with
specific crimes, the disbanding of militias and the participation of
all groups represented in the government in dealing with security
issues.
Washington has been pushing al-Maliki's government to pass key laws,
including measures to share national oil revenues and incorporate some
ousted Baathists into mainstream politics. But the Sunni ministers'
resignation from the Cabinet - not the parliament - foreshadows even
greater difficulty in building consensus when lawmakers return after a
monthlong summer recess on Sept. 4.
___
AP writers Kim Gamel and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
fix the infrastructure?
How about spending those billions here in the US? Maybe we wouldn't
have bridges dropping into the Mississippi.
Water taps run dry in Baghdad By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press
Writer
2 hours, 21 minutes ago
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.
Adel al-Ardawi, a spokesman for the Baghdad city government, said that
even with sufficient electricity "it would take 24 hours for the water
mains to refill so we can begin pumping to residents. And even then
the water won't be clean for a time. We just don't have the
electricity or fuel for our generators to keep the system flowing."
Noah Miller, spokesman for the U.S. reconstruction program in Baghdad,
said that water treatment plants were working "as far as we know."
"It could be a host of issues. ... And one of those may be leaky trunk
lines. If there's not enough pressure to cancel out that leakage,
that's when the water could fail to reach the household," Miller said.
He said that there had been a nationwide power blackout for a few
hours Wednesday night that might be causing problems for all systems
that depend on Iraq's already creaking electricity grid.
He blamed the outages on provinces north of Baghdad and in Basra in
the far south where officials failed to cutback as required when they
had taken their daily ration of electricity.
"It takes a long time to bring the power back up (to the grid's
capacity and demand)," Miller said.
In the meantime, Iraqis suffer in brutal heat. It was 117 degrees in
the capital Thursday, down from 120 the day before. With the power out
or crackling through the decrepit system just a few hours each day,
even those who can afford air conditioning do not have the power to
run it.
Many Baghdad residents have banded together to use power from
neighborhood generators, but the cost of fuel and therefore
electricity is skyrocketing. Diesel fuel was going for nearly $4 a
gallon on Thursday.
As expected in the midst of a water shortage, the cost of purified
bottled water has shot up 33 percent. A 10-liter bottle now costs
$1.60.
"For us, we can buy bottled water. But I'm thinking about the poor who
cannot afford to buy clean water," said Um Zainab, a 44-year-old
homemaker in eastern Baghdad. "This shows the weakness and the
inefficiency of government officials who are good at only one thing -
blaming each other for the problems we are face."
The pace of the mayhem that saw 142 killed or found dead nationwide on
Wednesday tapered off Thursday, but a suicide car bomber slammed into
an Iraqi police station northeast of Baghdad and killed at least 13
people, police said.
Most of the dead were policemen and recruits lining up outside the
station in Hibhib, the same small Sunni town near Baqouba where al-
Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S.
airstrike more than a year ago. The area is considered a stronghold of
both al-Qaida-linked militants and Saddam Hussein loyalists.
Fifteen were wounded in the attack, a police officer said on condition
of anonymity out of security concerns.
A total of 58 people were killed or found dead across the country
Thursday, according to police and hospital and morgue officials.
The U.S. military announced three more soldier deaths: two killed in a
mortar or rocket attack Tuesday, and another killed in a roadside
bombing Wednesday. At least 3,659 U.S. military personnel have died
since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an
Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday he is more optimistic
about improvements in Iraqi security than he is about getting
legislation passed by the bitterly divided government.
"In some ways we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust
and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on
legislation," Gates said.
His remarks came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party asked
the country's largest Sunni Arab bloc to reconsider its withdrawal
from government to save Iraq's national unity government.
All six Cabinet ministers from the Iraqi Accordance Front quit al-
Maliki's Cabinet a day earlier to protest what they called the prime
minister's failure to respond to a set of demands.
Among them were the release of security detainees not charged with
specific crimes, the disbanding of militias and the participation of
all groups represented in the government in dealing with security
issues.
Washington has been pushing al-Maliki's government to pass key laws,
including measures to share national oil revenues and incorporate some
ousted Baathists into mainstream politics. But the Sunni ministers'
resignation from the Cabinet - not the parliament - foreshadows even
greater difficulty in building consensus when lawmakers return after a
monthlong summer recess on Sept. 4.
___
AP writers Kim Gamel and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
