OBAMA DROPS PLEDGE TO WITHDRAW COMBAT TROOPS FROM IRAQ
"Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sep. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011... a "senior administration official" acknowledged that the 50,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq beyond the deadline will have the same combat capabilities as the combat brigades that have been withdrawn..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52366
Monday, August 02, 2010
ELECTRIC GRID FAILS IRAQIS
"... thickets of wires as dense as a jungle canopy have become as much a part of Iraq’s cityscapes as blast walls and checkpoints..."
"... the state of electricity has been one of the most closely watched benchmarks of Iraq’s progress, and of the American effort to transform a dictatorship into a democracy... Yet Baghdad, the capital, had five hours of electricity a day in July... Before Mr. Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait 20 years ago this month, Iraq had the capacity to produce 9,295 megawatts of power. By 2003, after American bombings and years of international sanctions, it was half that... Iraq does generate more electricity than it did in 2003, but nowhere near enough to match rising demand... Iraq’s electrical grid remains a patchwork of old power plants and new, supplemented with makeshift and inadequate solutions. Iraq now imports 700 megawatts from Iran..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/world/middleeast/02electricity.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&hp
"... thickets of wires as dense as a jungle canopy have become as much a part of Iraq’s cityscapes as blast walls and checkpoints..."
"... the state of electricity has been one of the most closely watched benchmarks of Iraq’s progress, and of the American effort to transform a dictatorship into a democracy... Yet Baghdad, the capital, had five hours of electricity a day in July... Before Mr. Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait 20 years ago this month, Iraq had the capacity to produce 9,295 megawatts of power. By 2003, after American bombings and years of international sanctions, it was half that... Iraq does generate more electricity than it did in 2003, but nowhere near enough to match rising demand... Iraq’s electrical grid remains a patchwork of old power plants and new, supplemented with makeshift and inadequate solutions. Iraq now imports 700 megawatts from Iran..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/world/middleeast/02electricity.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&hp
