It was earlier this week (or maybe last week) that US politicians and TV personalities were complaining that the Iraqi parliament was taking August off because it was too hot. The argument went, if our troops can patrol in full gear in 130 degrees, politicians can sit in air conditioned rooms. My first thought was: air conditioning? I thought Iraq only had electricity a few hours a day still, did they fix that?
It turns out no they didn't. The Boston Globe today has an article Utility report shows Iraq still depends on US. "The Army Corps of Engineers has been forced to resume control of a crucial power plant in Baghdad after poor maintenance by untrained Iraqi staff led to the "catastrophic failure" of key equipment in the plant, according to an inspection by the special inspector general of Iraq reconstruction."
"Power production in Iraq has consistently failed to meet the State Department's goal of an average of 6,000 megawatts per day -- about 2,000 megawatts more than production under Saddam Hussein. Iraq's power plants have averaged 4,000 megawatts per day this past month. Baghdad, which got plenty of power under Hussein, now gets a few hours per day"
Now I'm not commenting on the idea of the parliament taking a vacation. All right, I'll comment a little to say that our Congress and President are taking vacations this summer and have taken previous ones, while the nation is at war. The point of this post was to say that I'd expect politicians and journalists talking via the press, news and fake news to remember that air conditioning requires electricity and to remember the state of power production in Iraq, it's one of those benchmark thingies.
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