U.S. Drops Baghdad Electricity Reports

[Purveyor]

The daily length of time that residents have power has dropped. The figure is considered a key indicator of quality of life.


WASHINGTON -- As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.

But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly "status report" for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day.

Instead, the department now reports on the electricity generated nationwide, a measurement that does not indicate how much power Iraqis in Baghdad or elsewhere actually receive.

The change, a State Department spokesman said, reflects a technical decision by reconstruction officials in Baghdad who are scaling back efforts to estimate electricity consumption as they wind down U.S. involvement in rebuilding Iraq's power grid.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-na-iraqpower27jul27,0,705711.story?coll=la-home-center

[Bob3]

1. good god - they'll stop talking about painting the schools next.

and then what good news will we have out of iraq?

[IDemo]

2. Things are going so well for those people... n/t

[lonestarnot]

3. Does it mention that only 41% of the population have ANY electricity?

[Horse with no Name]

4. Anyone care to surmise that the bulk of the energy goes to

run the oil refineries?