Keep in mind, the ISF are in their infancy. They're six months away from finishing their initial build-up, so there is still an enormous power vacuum; 2007 is probably when we can look forward to seeing this kind of thing gradually stamped out as the ratio of ISF to violent criminals/terrorists/Baathists increases, and a larger percentage of the latter are jailed/killed. It's the same dynamic we saw re violent crime in the U.S. over the last few decades, though on a different scale.

There's no question we're winning. It's just a matter of how long it will take to move the demographics far enough in our favor that the violence subsides and civil society can move forward.

Keep in mind the security forces are run by corrupt politicians that at least here-to-fore have used them as their private enforcers... when then arent out freelancing on their own. This is incredibly serious. From what i've heard the Iraqi Army is somewhat independant but the interior and police forces that do the majority of the on the ground work in Baghdad are simply arms of the religious nuts at the moment.

A lot of nasty stupidity on our part is coming home to roost. It seems likely that a much firmer hand in general was needed at the start of the war, a MacArthur type military governor. That is hindsight however. What is unforgiveable to me is the inability/unwillingness to adapt when it became clear our policies were failing. We did adapt in some areas (booting the cancer that was Bremer) but in others an unwillingness to even acknowledge problems has been practically suicidal. This includes the total failure in infastructure repair, our kid gloving the Sunnis early on, and finally allowing the Baghdad police and paramilitaries to become religious commandos.

The terrible problem with the latter is that now the citizenry cant 'turn on' the bad guys... who are they going to call? The local police who are the death squads when they are off duty? The organizations we set up to combat the extremists have been infiltrated with extremists. I dont know of any good solution for this. What else can we do besides plunking down more US troops in Baghdad who can maybe baby sit the IA and hope they dont get compromised or intimidated as well?

It seems that we are going to have to do the opposite of what the politicos have been banking on and get more, not less, involved in Iraq. Its either that or watch the Iranian payrolled Sadrites de facto take the province and a Balkans type blood letting go forward. We are basically watching an ethnic cleansing if not a genocide develop. Im not sure how much longer we can sit on our hands. We're going to have to find more troops somehow, lock down the city, lean on the Iraqi politicos to dissolve their own police and interior forces, and rebuild them from scratch under our eye (a close eye this time) as we have with the IA. Anything else is an invitation to repeat our mistakes. The Iraqis cant do this anymore, not alone. The brownshirts may not be in control of the government but they are at least strong enough to nullify the governments writ in Baghdad. That is untenable.

That makes sense Mark but I don't see anyone about come clean and say "we've been blundering around for the last three years and we need to start from scratch".

Officially we gave iraqi sovereignty to Allawi a long time ago. If we overthrow the current government and try again, who in iraq is going to believe we'll actually take the next government seriously?

No question, the militias will have to be disbanded, and their influence over the IP curtailed. Maliki has announced his intent to deal with this issue.

The IP have some issues, but they're not insoluble. Conflicted loyalty is a problem as old as armies themselves, and the solutions are nearly as old.

Remember, we kicked the Islamists out of the Euphrates ratlines; Baghdad is where the remnants have gravitated. Fortunately, we're blessed with extremely stupid adversaries: the hardcore Islamism isn't making them very popular anywhere in Iraq, which is why our tiplines are so succesful.

Just keep in mind this is a work in progress, and consider how much farther along we are today than a year ago, esp. in terms of ISF capability.

"Officially we gave iraqi sovereignty to Allawi a long time ago. If we overthrow the current government and try again, who in iraq is going to believe we'll actually take the next government seriously?"

There's the rub. A lot of this can be traced back to Bremer. Essentially the only thing that he concerned himself with was pushing paper from his desk to an Iraqis desk, as though that would solve all our problems. His entire focus was on creating a viable political class to hand soveriegnty to. This was important, but as we have seen we've basically handed a nerf baton to the Iraqis.

If the governmental tools we created for the Iraqis were dynamic and something less than totally corrupt, the central government would be in a stronger position. Maybe Allawi's clique wouldnt have been chased out of parliment for their ineptitude and the extremists ushered in with promises of reform (shades of Hamas?).

Now we have a delicate problem. We cant kick the sandcastle over and start from scratch without turning the entire nation against us. We need to engage in some wiley diplomacy and hardball arm twisting to coerce the new government into ceeding us the security mandate in Baghdad and all that goes with it including control and composition of police and interior. I think that can be done (we have the carrots and the sticks are readily apparant). At that point its going to take some truly inspired organization leadership to crack open humpty dumpty and put him back together again, and only the military has shown the ability to do that.

Sadly I dont see the Bush administration even cognicent of this crisis, much less ready to apply the boot to the State Department and their own flacks and give the Pentagon supreme authority in Iraq (as should have been done years ago).

"Remember, we kicked the Islamists out of the Euphrates ratlines; Baghdad is where the remnants have gravitated. Fortunately, we're blessed with extremely stupid adversaries: the hardcore Islamism isn't making them very popular anywhere in Iraq, which is why our tiplines are so succesful."

You're mixing apples and oranges. The Sunni (including AQ) terrorists we beat up in Anbar are not the guys running around in police uniforms cutting the heads off Sunnis and imposing Shiia extremist law. They are in fact mortal enemies.

We are running into 'interesting times' where Shiia extremists backed by Iran are trying to cleanse Baghdad of Sunni's, and Sunni's are still harboring fellow Sunni terrorists backed by Al Qaeda trying to goad the Shiia into attempting just that. One side is trying to pick a fight in order to scare out the US and force the fellow Sunni nations to come to the Sunnis aid, essentially reempowering the Baathist control. The other side is being goaded by Iran into making a power grab for control of the nation and the Sunni nations can go hang.

We started out this war doing an ok job of playing one side against the other but that has fallen by the wayside. We coddled the Sunni instead of putting fear of god in them by threatening to put the Kurds in charge of their cities. Now we are coddling the Shiia as they try to bring Iran to Baghdad. Are options are limited now and we are running into a bad (if predictable) case scenario: because we were soft before we may be forced to be even more brutal now. Its not the iron fist at the beginning that gets ya, its the slow buildup of strictness after initial laxity that kills ya. We should have been hanging captured terrorists from lamp poles, and instead we have been playing catch and release and that is a fact.

Crusader! Right-wing religious nut! Racist! This is a war against terrorism, not against Islam the "religion of peace"!

(I'm kidding, of course. Though it's ironic to note they already have the fear of a god in them, and that may be part of the problem.)

I agree, there was too much emphasis on a political solution instead of "breaking the will" of the terrorist insurgents and the population which supported them. We essentially took a lot of power from a segment of the population, stirred things up, then offered them a chance to earn that power back... and the more they keep things stirred up, the more power they can win back. All carrot, no stick; and worst of all, we can't bring out a military stick to "start over" without the carrot losing its credibility as well. That's a Bad Thing when our stated goal is to get everyone to accept the carrot as the long-term solution.

And yes, I realize I pushed that metaphor beyond the breaking point...

Victory will occur in 2008. Here is why the trends converge at that time

We wanted democracy for everybody who agreed with us, and we tried to use military force to break the will of those who didn't agree. But we weren't strong enough.

We tried to go after everybody who said they wanted us out of iraq. That left us with a major offensive against sunnis and a major offensive against al Sadr at the same time. We weren't strong enough. And the sunnis who were sort of on our side objected to us killing Fallujah, while the shias who were sort of on our side objected to us killing Najaf. We sided with the shias. From that point on we couldn't play them off against each other. Sunnis remember Fallujah. They want us gone. We can offer to protect them from shias now, but we can't deliver on that promise. All we have to work with are the iraqi army and our own forces, which can no more protect sunni civilians from shia terrorists than they can protect shia civilians from sunni terrorists. And besides, they remember Fallujah.

What leverage do we have on shias? We can use the kurdish armies and US army to attack them. But if we try to influence them too much they can just vote to order us out of their country, and then what? Conquer them again? We'd have everybody strongly against us except the kurds then. And what would we tell the american public and the UN? "They just weren't good enough at running iraq, so we decided to send in more troops and take it over again until they're ready for democracy."

Like it or not, we have to let the shia iraqi government handle things their own way. We can support them in whatever they want to do, or we can come home.

What could we have done different? .

Suppose we had been serious about democracy. And when people like al Sadr announced they wanted us out of iraq, we responded that we intended to leave any place they didn't want us, as soon as they had a working democracy. Do nothing to disenfranchise sunnis or Ba'athists or anybody except officials who were convicted of actions that were officially criminal under Saddam's laws.

Set up local government first, with elections for local officials. It looks like we're doing something and we are. Then regional governments. By the time we get to national government there are lots of regional politicians who each have their base. Meanwhile local areas that have their democratic local governments and that demand we stay out of their areas, get asked whether they can maintain order. We pull out of those areas and local police hired by local governments do maintain order or else we move back in. Where's the terrorism fit into that? Get a working democracy and we leave you alone -- unless you allow too many terrorists and then we don't leave you alone. A real strong incentive to keep things peaceful, that we didn't have when we put troops in that annoyed people even when the local government was mostly trying to keep things quiet.

By this time we might be on our way out. The ethnic cleansing might come regardless, or it might not. Reconstruction would be much farther along because local public opinion and local police wouldn't tolerate sabotage of their infrastructure. Probably much less violence because we'd be recognising insurgent governments as legitimate if they won fair elections, and they'd have a lot less to fight for.

Democracy is a powerful tool, and we could have used it. But if we did we wouldn't be in control. We would have had to let people say antiamerican things, and run for office on antiamerican platforms. We'd have had to let Ba'athist officials run for office and serve if they won. We'd have let the Ba'ath party itself campaign, and probably they'd win in some areas and win some seats in the national assembly.

We wouldn't be in control. That's how it works with democracy.

Although it's possible we should have been more ruthless immediately after the conquest of Baghdad, I submit that we were probably no more capable of doing that in a manner other than random, haphazard violence than we were of securing Saddam's administrative and military assets. As you will recall, we managed to save only the Oil Ministry. I also think that we would have done better to take reconstruction seriously, but at the time, as you will also recall, the US Government was laughing over freezing out those European governments that had not cooperated in Operation He-tried-to-kill-my-daddy, turning the work over, instead, to interns of the Heritage Foundation. To this day oil, electricity, water, and sewerage capacity are no better than under Saddam, despite the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars (much of which appears to have gone to corruption on a scale quite dwarfing Oil for Food).

I absolutely must credit Mr Buehner and the post's author, however, for not having adopted the latest explanation for the Charlie Foxtrot that is Iraq. According to the new conservative exercise in personal responsibility, everything would have gone just great except for the once-small (but now much larger) chorus of America-hating left-wingers who failed to praise Emperor Bush's New Iraq-made Clothes to the Heavens.

Andrew J Lazarus --

"Things were better under Saddam" ... file that one under just plain wrong statements.

Under the Coalition and new Iraqi Govt. investment in infrastructure, including sewage, power, water, etc. has gone from ZERO under Saddam (no money left after his palaces and Military) to considerable.

Morever resources are allocated better and more fairly; instead of Baghdad only getting power in certain areas 24/7, the pathetic grid (no investment since 1967 !!!!) distributes power as evenly as possible even if Baghdad favored areas go dark for a while. Having been a visitor (briefly) in Western China, Xianxing to be exact, I can attest to daily power outages even in big provincial cities in China, which has not lacked for investment capital or effort in nearly thirty years. Quite the reverse of Iraq.

Iraq's problems stem from the slow-motion civil war that occured under Saddam (Sunni strongman slaughters everyone else ) and the INEVITABLE tribal feuds writ large (destruction of water, power, electricity, sewerage by Sunni tribes as fast as it's built sometimes).

That's the NATURE of the Third World. OF COURSE Iraqis are tribal and therefore in a constant civil war with tribal militias ... see Germany/Central Europe's German Speakers in the 17th Century when tribal feuds in the Thirty Years war led to horrors like Magdeburg and half of German speakers being slaughtered.

Modernity and nationalism as opposed to tribalism are fragile things. Iraqis are not there yet and likely require a good bit of slaughtering each other (sadly) before they come to the conclusion that civil war is not desireable, and no one can "win." Right now Sunnis think "just enough" terror ala Saddam can bring them back into the domination of the whole country, and Shia Militias have their own ideas ala Germany after the Kaiser and the Freikorps.

This has NOTHING to do with the US, GWB, or the West. It would have happened if Saddam died, or was killed by one of his sons, or lost the power to terrorize by getting sick and feeble.

Mark,

The Sunni (including AQ) terrorists we beat up in Anbar are not the guys running around in police uniforms cutting the heads off Sunnis and imposing Shiia extremist law.

Sorry, but I think you're mistaken. The story is about Sunni enclaves and terrorists, not Shia:

All of these districts, with the exception of Adhamiya, are more or less mixed or Sunni majority areas.

He also mentions car bombs, which means Al Qaeda. Shia militias have generally not used them.

There are of course also Shia death squads that need to be dealt with, but that's not what he's talking about here. These are in fact the remnants of those chased from the ratlines.

The Shia militias aren't as big a problem, as they aren't the hardcore, fight-to-the-death types like the Sunni Baathists/Qaedists. The rogue Shia elements can be brought to heel and militias disbanded by popular demand, probably without major violence, but the rogue wannabe tyrant/theocrat Sunnis obviously will have to be fought every inch of the way.

This has NOTHING to do with the US, GWB, or the West. It would have happened if Saddam died, or was killed by one of his sons, or lost the power to terrorize by getting sick and feeble.

By that reasoning, it was our responsibility that it happened now instead of 10, 20, or 30 years from now.

On the other hand, it might not have been inevitable even then. In panama Noriega succeeded Torrijos and nothing drastic happened until Noriega defied the USA and got his country invaded. (Torrijos defied us and took back the cnanal. He died in an airplane explosion and after a little maneuvering Noriega took over with our blessing, but Noriega turned out even more incorrigible.)

Sometimes things don't fall apart when a strongman loses out. Sometimes another strongman keeps it going. Not that this is an unalloyed blessing.

So anyway, if you figure this was the inevitable outcome of our invasion, why did you support it?

AJL,

To this day oil, electricity, water, and sewerage capacity are no better than under Saddam

Not true, they are all considerably better.

Two things a lot of people don't realize:

1) Electricity under Saddam was fed to Baghdad at the expense of everyone else.

2) Generators (which are now everywhere) were very difficult to obtain.

On average, Iraqis who do not live in Baghdad are much better off in terms of electricity, while overall output is about the same now as prewar -- but scheduled to double over the next two years as reconstruction begins to bear fruit (power plants are not built in a day you know). Access to water and sewage are greatly improved everywhere; the (liberal) Brookings Institute's Iraq Index documents this.

Operation He-tried-to-kill-my-daddy,

That's ridiculous. Besides trivializing the atttempted assassination of an ex-President of the United States, you elide all the many valid reasons to remove Hussein as stated in the Congressional authorization of the war. And calling Bush "emperor" is just a symptom of BDS. He hasn't tried to exercise a tenth of the powers FDR claimed.

"Often, those commenting on Iraq reconstruction begin by stating that electrical capacity is lower than prewar levels," Bowen told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "They are correct."

Even after billions were spent on power plants and substations, electricity generation still hasn't regained the level it had before the U.S. invasion of 2003. When Fallon's experts keep the lights burning late, they're relying on emergency U.S. generators in their "Green Zone" enclave, since the rest of Baghdad gets power only a few hours a day.

Barely one-third of the water-treatment projects the Americans planned will be completed. Only 32 percent of the Iraqi population has access to clean drinking water now, compared with 50 percent before the war, according to the U.S. special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction.

About 19 percent of Iraqis today have working sewer connections, compared with 24 percent before 2003.

When fuel was still cheaper than water, before the government cut subsidies in December, Shamari made up for the lack of power with a gas-powered generator. But with the price of fuel now three to five times what it was just three months ago, that's no longer an option. "How is Iraq supposed to make an economic recovery if businesses don't have basic necessities like electricity?" asks Humam al-Shamaa, an economics professor at Baghdad University. "And the lack of electricity affects security, too, because the streets aren't lighted after sundown and so businesses close earlier than normal."

New numbers this week [April 06] from the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (SIGIR) show oil production at 2.18 million barrels per day, 400,000 below 2003 prewar levels.

they are all considerably better

J Thomas says:

We wanted democracy for everybody who agreed with us, and we tried to use military force to break the will of those who didn't agree. But we weren't strong enough.

Not strong enough or not having the will to use our strength? Big difference.

There has been a lot of hand wringing about Iraqi deaths (see AJL above). How do we destroy a village or five to get our message through in the face of folks like AJL?

We are stuck with the war we have and must make the best of it. Including keeping folks like AJL merely biting our ankles instead of hanging off our backs.

#14 from J Thomas,

I supported the war for geopolotical reasons. Location, location, location.

As to having a strong man in the saddle to "keep order". I'm again' it. The Iraqi people deserve a chance. Their chances may be poor under us. They are zero under a strong man system.

#14AJL,

Fuel subsidies encourage market distortions. Like folks running fuel trucks from Iraq to Kuwait to arbitrage the subsidies.

BTW could you advise on who destroyed all Saddam's wonderful infrastructure that so well supported the Iraqis? If you have a link as opposed to suppositions?

As to oil production. I gather that "insurgents" keep attacking them. Why would they do that?

My guess is that American subsidies will return based on negotiations with the new government. We want to get something for our money.

That should be #16 AJL to start #19.

As to having a strong man in the saddle to "keep order". I'm again' it.

I'm against it too. And if we wanted that, it's too late now. A strongman who needs the US Army to keep him in power, looks weak.

BTW could you advise on who destroyed all Saddam's wonderful infrastructure that so well supported the Iraqis? If you have a link as opposed to suppositions?

Why does that matter? For the argument economy-is-better/no-it's-not it's irrelevant whether we destroyed it or whether we merely allowed it to be destroyed by failing to provide security and being just strong enough to prevent anyone else from providing security either.

Either way, things got destroyed and our wonderful reconstruction spending has been mostly wasted.

Torrijos defied us and took back the canal? I don't think so. Carter gave it away.

Using Baghdad as an example of lack of power supply is disengenuous. Previously Baghdad was getting a greater share of the grid than other locations. The power is now shared more equitably.

Regardless of how its distributed, the bottom line is that before the war the Iraqi national grid provided an average daily output of about 4000 megawatts. 10 billion dollars and three years later its at 3800 megawatts. The stated goal was to reach 6000 megawatts by July 1 2004. source

There is no way to look at the electricity numbers and judge them to be anything but abject, utter, wreckless, maddening, failure.

Torrijos defied us and took back the canal? I don't think so. Carter gave it away.

I think your interpretation is not unreasonable. Still, he was very popular in panama as a result, his plane exploded, and after a short period of confusion Noriega took over with our blessing.

An example of one strongman succeeding another instead of mass violence then the first is gone.

AJL,

In fact I did cite a source, an extremely well-known liberal one. You can grab ad hoc comments from news articles several months old, but they're no substitute for real data.

I don't think I need to cite a source on the generators, it's common knowledge Iraq was under sanctions and that Saddam restricted availability of those goods. If you like, you can google it yourself.

There is no way to look at the electricity numbers and judge them to be anything but abject, utter, wreckless, maddening, failure.

Well, there's also the realistic way to look at it, which is to note that exsting infrastructure was falling apart (and this was underestimated initially) and new infrastructure takes time to install. Not to say there haven't been mistakes (such as ordering natural gas powered turbines), but most of the problems were inherited. Keep in mind, Iraq's actual current capacity is about 10,000 MW, but over half that is unusable due to Saddam-era deterioration.

This presentation from the Army Corps of Engineers shows where that $10B is going: Iraq's electrical production should double by 2008. (see chart on p29)

http://www.rebuilding-iraq.net/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PCO_CONTENT/HOME/DOWNLOADS/THE_IRAQ_CHALLENGE.PDF

From the Iraq Index:

PUBLIC SERVICE

Percentage of homes with access to piped water 78%
Water treatment facilities rehabilitated 22
Capability of serving potable water 3.1 million additional people since fall of
Saddam Hussein

Some people are going around saying these are worse that prewar, but that seems to be based on either electrical issues (water is pumped in Iraq, and generally not held in water towers) or compare current polling data to highly doubtful Saddam-era gov't pronouncements; in neither case do they address the real water infrastructure improvements wrought postbellum.

Iraq's electrical production should double by 2008.

Maybe it will. But it was supposed to nearly double from the low point by 2004 also. Projections for the future -- for a time when we might already have pulled out -- are notoriously unreliable.

J Thomas,

As I alluded to before, those earlier predictions were made at a time when the extent of infrastructure decay was not well understood.

These new predictions are based on the fact numerous power plant projects are completing in 2006/2007. Iraq is projected to add about 2000MW/year for the next 10 years. Additionally, hi-voltage lines are being added to allow them to import electricity from neighboring countries to help meet Iraq's skyrocketing demand in the meantime.

TallDave, you aren't very familiar with the concept called "fool me once", are you?

Here's what comes online in the next two years.

2007 2006 NEW POWER STATIONS (MW)
------------------------------------
500 250 MUSSAYEB G.T.S.(10X50)
246 246 KHOR ALZUBAIR G.T.S (2X123)
258 258 KIRKUK G.T.S (1X258 )
400 200 BAGHDAD SOUTH G.T.S./2 (16X25)
60 60 SAMAW.S. (4X15)
246 123 NAJAF G.T.S (2X123)
320 160 NEW DIBIS G.T.S.(2X160)
230 115 HADITHA DIESEL STATION (10X32)
340 170 SAMARA DIESELSTATION (17X20)
115 115 NORTH BAGHDAD & HURRIYA DIESEL S
375 - YOUSIFIYA G.T.S (6X125)
300 - RUMAILA G.T.S.(6X150)
840 420 YOUSIFYA THERMAL STATION (4 X210
---- -----
4230 2117 TOTAL CAPACITY FOR NEW P.S.

J Thomas,

Well, you can claim the ACOE are trying to "fool" you if you like.

"Well, there's also the realistic way to look at it, which is to note that exsting infrastructure was falling apart (and this was underestimated initially) and new infrastructure takes time to install. Not to say there haven't been mistakes (such as ordering natural gas powered turbines), but most of the problems were inherited. Keep in mind, Iraq's actual current capacity is about 10,000 MW, but over half that is unusable due to Saddam-era deterioration."

No one is arguing that rebuilding the infastructure is an easy job. Unfortunately we dont get to pick and choose which tasks are going to be critical to American vital interests. All we can do is look at the project and decide if the proper level of attention, resources, and most importantly oversight has been applied. By any such measure the answer is an overwhelming NO.

We are the United States of America. We built a transcontinental railroad in 6 years. We built the Panama Canal in 10 years. The Hoover Dam in 5. We turned out a Victory Ship a day during WW2, innovated floating harbors 10 miles long off Normandy beach, rebuilt Europe practically from scratch. When it is claimed that it is impossible to supply Iraq with a functional electricity network given 3 years and (essentially) infinite resources all i can do is scoff (and try not to sigh). Yeh, its a difficult task, but this particular task plays directly into our greatest strength. Even a cursory look at how the reconstruction has been handled reveals that simple apathy is the greatest culprit. There is no true accountability, no particular individual out there rattling cages.

If we were really serious about this, American industry (realistically a very small part of it actually) could be called upon to turn out everything from turbines to high voltage cable to generators 100x over what we need- just to sit in warehouses in Kuwait until a terrorist blows something up, then have it on hand to swap out within hours. Every engineer in the employ of the Pentagon could be called up and sent to Iraq to work on the projects. Nothing even approaching this level of committment has happened. Thats what i mean when i describe the reconstruction as a failure of leadership. Its being treated with about the same level of attention as a pot hole filling project on I-80.

"This presentation from the Army Corps of Engineers shows where that $10B is going: Iraq's electrical production should double by 2008. (see chart on p29)"

Considering that the previous estimates have been so grossly innaccurate i dont draw much solace from this one.

"Here's what comes online in the next two years."

1: Thats what is claimed will come on. We will see.
2: At the rate we are going the will come on just in time to keep the lights on for the Islamic Republic of Iraq.

We needed the power on over the last two years to placate the angry, sweaty Iraqis on the fence. At this point- I wont say its too late, but without question the damage has been done. Letting Sunnis sit in hundred and twenty degree sweat boxes while they considered their options was a monumental, blundering mistake.

We built the Panama Canal in 10 years.

Actually, the Panama Canal was planned for centuries, and took 34 years to complete (the U.S. built on previous French progress) -- and as many as 27,500 people died building it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_canal

As they say, everything takes longer and costs more. Iraq has been fairly typical in that regard.

If we were really serious about this, American industry (realistically a very small part of it actually) could be called upon to turn out everything from turbines to high voltage cable to generators 100x over what we need- just to sit in warehouses in Kuwait until a terrorist blows something up,

If we had the power plants, we certainly wouldn't keep them in warehouses in Kuwait; Iraq needs electricity now.

We needed the power on over the last two years to placate the angry, sweaty Iraqis on the fence.

Oh, I don't know. Iraqis aren't stupid, you know: they realize who is trying to improve the situation and who isn't. They may wish that things were getting better, and blame us and the elected government for not doing better, but the insurgents weren't exactly winning friends by knocking over transmission towers. That's why our tiplines get thousands of actionable tips every month.

2. At the rate we are going the will come on just in time to keep the lights on for the Islamic Republic of Iraq.

No, the Iraqis have consistently rejected theocratic leadership.

"If we had the power plants, we certainly wouldn't keep them in warehouses in Kuwait; Iraq needs electricity now. "

Now you're just fencing with me. Did you know you can buy multi megawatt gennies off the shelf? Please dont try telling me this country is bending over backwards and jumping through hoops to turn the lights on in Baghdad. Its so readilly apparent that is not the case any attempt to rationalize or defend it just smacks of defensiveness.

"Oh, I don't know. Iraqis aren't stupid, you know: they realize who is trying to improve the situation and who isn't."

Losers always whine about doing their best. Winners go home and F the prom queen.

" They may wish that things were getting better, and blame us and the elected government for not doing better, but the insurgents weren't exactly winning friends by knocking over transmission towers. That's why our tiplines get thousands of actionable tips every month."

True but immaterial. The insurgents stupidity has been our greatest ally in this war, no question. But our own stupidity has been our greatest enemy, and that should be something we can do something about. Relying on a strategy of our enemies managing to alienate the population into cooperating with us doesnt seem particularly wise, not to mention proactive.

"No, the Iraqis have consistently rejected theocratic leadership."

Funny how Sadr's goons are holding all those seats in Parliment.

After the first gulf war, when we bombed out their electric grid, the iraqis themselves got it back up to essentially full production in 6 weeks.

We contracted out those services to a Halliburton subsidiary. They spent a whole year surveying the problem and making plans. It took them a year to find out how bad the situation was.

The iraqis had a lot of french and russian equipment. Halliburton decided to replace it all with new american equipment. So they minimised replacement parts etc for the existing equipment.

By the time we were ready to put in our new stuff security had gotten so bad that it cost $20 in security for every $5 in electrician labor. It mostly didn't happen.

That pretty much covers the first two years, when I got too depressed to keep tracking it. If the ACOE has taken on the job directly instead of just monitoring contractors, that's very good news. They can do the installation and the army can guard the power plants instead of the iraqi security guys who put their families' lives ahead of the job. It might actually work provided we increase troop strength enough.

Did you know you can buy multi megawatt gennies off the shelf?

And in fact they did just that -- then promptly found they couldn't properly fuel them, because while Iraq has lots of oil, it doesn't have much refining capacity (and what it has doesn't work that well). They started running crude through the things; you can imagine how that worked out.

Please dont try telling me this country is bending over backwards and jumping through hoops to turn the lights on in Baghdad.

Well, we are spending tens of billions toward that end. Of course, you can do always do more, but the effort is significant.

Losers always whine about doing their best. Winners go home and F the prom queen.

Losers whine about things not being perfect and predict failure. Winners take a realistic perspective and work for improvement.

Relying on a strategy of our enemies managing to alienate the population into cooperating with us doesnt seem particularly wise, not to mention proactive.

We're proactively dong $20B of reconstruction -- and that's on top of what the elected Iraqi gov't is spending.

Funny how Sadr's goons are holding all those seats in Parliment.

They're also a distinct minority.

That's why our tiplines get thousands of actionable tips every month.

You think so?

One time I had a downstairs neighbor who didn't like me. He thought my kids made too much noise walking on his ceiling. I didn't see what to do about it. I got estimates to replace the padding under my carpet -- $1500. I offered to split the bill with him. He yelled at me. When one of my kids went to the bathroom at 3 AM he came upstairs and banged on my door and threatened me. He said if he ever came up here again he'd F me up.

I didn't know how to keep a 3-year-old from walking hard, barefoot. I registered the threat with my lawyer. But instead of beating me up, he called the police. He accused me of child abuse. We live in a low-crime area where the police have plenty of spare time. The police showed up and banged on my door. I let them in. They made us all sit on the floor. They called more police, who searched the apartment for evidence. I think at the crest of the wave there were 12 of them. They called the Child Protective Services who sent two social workers. It took well over four hours before the whole thing settled down. If the police had found anything to arrest me for, they would have. If the social workers had found anything suspicious there's no telling what would have happened. My wife and children got a big scare.

One phone call. It didn't stop the noise, and eventually he moved out. But he got a lot of revenge easy.

If a significant fraction of the tips actually led to insurgents, then I'd say it meant a lot of iraqis didn't like insurgents. But as it is, the implication is that a lot of iraqis have grudges against somebody.

After the first gulf war, when we bombed out their electric grid, the iraqis themselves got it back up to essentially full production in 6 weeks.

My understanding is they mostly had to replace substations and tranmission lines.

Now add in 12 years of sanctions, incompetent Saddam-era management, and general neglect. Mix with another war and shake well, and you get the situation we had in 2003: a severely degraded infrastructure that could not be quickly or easily repaired.

Three years later, the new power plants are beginning to come online.

Mark,

Trying to lay this at Bremer's feet is simply refusing to face reality.

First there was Jay Garner. He didn't toe the line and he was booted. You don't think Bremer wasn't aware of what was expected from him?

Lay the blame where it's due. Otherwise you're the one refusing to adjust to the current realities.

Oh, I'm sure there are abuses of the tipline, as there are anywhere. But reports are about 70% of them actually do point to people doing very bad things.

Has even Garner claimed he was "booted?"

Garner was brought in to deal with typical war effects: massive water shortages, massive food shortages, massive refugee problems, massive disease (dysentery, cholera, etc). Fortunately (incredibly so, by usual wartime standards), none of those materialized (more refugees actually returned than left). He moved on.

Private generators provide about 2,000 MW of electricity on top of the 4,000 MW in the grid. This doesn't meet the approximately 6,500 MW of demand, but only about 30% of the users of the electricity are paying for it. We're supposed to add another 854 MW next month, but my guess is that the goal won't be reached and demand will continue to rise faster than supply.

Thanks PD. Hey, do you have a source on that 2000MW? I've been trying to figure that out for a while.

Oh, I don't know. Iraqis aren't stupid, you know: they realize who is trying to improve the situation and who isn't.

Don't talk to many OIF vets I guess.

Because the one enduring theme of any such conversations is We want them to succeed, they deserve to be free, but Iraqis make a box of rocks look smart

My numbers come from the SIGIR report for April 2006. Its a pdf.

Heh. I do hear that from vets, actually. But on the whole, most Iraqis aren't dumb enough to think the insurgents are going to give them a better life.

"And in fact they did just that -- then promptly found they couldn't properly fuel them, because while Iraq has lots of oil, it doesn't have much refining capacity (and what it has doesn't work that well). They started running crude through the things; you can imagine how that worked out."

Almost makes you wish that somehow we could find a source for diesel fuel or natural gas somewhere in the world. Or buy refineries off the shelf. Oh, you can! Assumedly we could also build them, even if it hasnt been done in the US in 25 years. Have we really been reduced to the level of BS that in the heart of the middle east the United States cant find enough fuel to work a vital national security project? Think about what you are trying to tell me right now.

"Well, we are spending tens of billions toward that end. Of course, you can do always do more, but the effort is significant."

Ah, its the thought that counts. Sorry, im supposed to be a conservative. I dont judge results by how many billions of dollars are shoveled into the furnace nor do i judge by how good the intentions are.

I wonder how much energy could be produced shoveling 10 billion one dollar bills into a furnace? There's a fun research project, could we conceivably powered Iraq more effectively by literally instead of figuratively burning money.

"Losers whine about things not being perfect and predict failure. Winners take a realistic perspective and work for improvement."

PERFECT?! ARE YOU SERIOUS? THE ELECTRICITY. IN IRAQ. IS STILL AT A LOWER LEVEL THAN IT WAS BEFORE THE WAR. THAT IS A G'D OUTRAGE.

Look, let me ask you a very simple quesion. Consider the total industrial might of the United States. Would you say we are using 100% of that potential to rebuild Iraq? Obviously not. 50%? 5%? 1%? .1%? Whatever number you arrive at, why is it that number and not more? Considering the results we need have not been met?

'We're proactively dong $20B of reconstruction -- and that's on top of what the elected Iraqi gov't is spending."

Spending money is not a measure nor an indicator of progress. If it were the drug war would be won, there would be no poverty in America, and every school child would be Einstein.

"They're also a distinct minority."

Sadr personally has 32 seats. The entire Sunni delegation is 44. That may technically be a minority but in practice it is a huge amount for one man to have in his pocket. It would be equivalent to me starting a political party and hold 11 senate seats.

"First there was Jay Garner. He didn't toe the line and he was booted. You don't think Bremer wasn't aware of what was expected from him?

Lay the blame where it's due. Otherwise you're the one refusing to adjust to the current realities."

Oh believe me, there is enough blame to go round, and Bush is at the top of the list. But Bremer deserves special attention because he did go along with the party line, did sing the same tune, and he knew it was BS. When the press asked questions, Bremer would say everything is great, we have plenty of troops, yadayada. He had the biggest bully pulpit in the world and he used it to toe the party line instead of do his job. He should have screamed bloody murder for what he needed and resigned if necessary. Playing ball just made him an enabler, and honestly a big part of the problem (perhaps the biggest) is that there have never been responsible individuals in positions of authority on the ground willing to take total responsibility and weild power with a little boot to ass mentality.

TallDave, the same Brookings source we are all using says that while 3.1 million (they have 2.85, but I'll admit that figure may be old) Iraqis have been added to the water system, the total number of Iraqis with access to water has dropped by about one-third.

As far as the electricity generation, all these goals for 2008 are so much vaporware. We didn't make our targets for 2004, 2005, and 2006. Our inability to make progress on living conditions alienated the population and showed us up as incompetent far more effectively than the Liberal Backstabbing Will-Eroding Penis-Wilting stateside operation ever could. And by the way, I see that I'm not the only one on this thread to notice that this delay is partly attributable to our desire to rebuild the grid in Cheneyburton's image, rather than associate with the Euroweenies who could probably have done the job cheaper and faster.

On oil and sewer, I guess you aren't even going to try to defend your original claim.

Just for fun:

Burning an ounce of paper produces: 2e4 J of energy.
A 1 dollar bill weighs one gram.
Hence burning 10 billion dollars produces 2e14 J of heat.
At 30% effeciency, that would produce 6e13 J of electricity.
That comes out to 1.7e6 Watts if you shovel it in over the course of a year (6e13j x (1yr/3.15e7 sec)), which is 1.7 MW.

Since May of 2004, Iraqi electricity production has increased by 88 MW (was 3712 to 3800MW). So in other words we have been about 50x more efficient in providing electricity in Iraq as we would have been had we been shoveling 10 billion dollar bills into a furnace for the last year. Anybody think thats pretty good?

Eek, i screwed up my conversions, didnt convert dollars to ounces. Divide everything by 28. Oh, well.

Quotes from a May 6 cable we from Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad...

"Crime in Iraq is rated by the U.S. State Department as critical and will continue to get worse for the foreseeable future," the embassy in Baghdad reports in the cable, which was addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice .

"Crime, terrorism, and warfare are a significant threat in all parts of Iraq. Active military operations are ongoing. The Department of State continues to strongly warn U.S. citizens against travel to Iraq, which remains very dangerous. Remnants of the former regime, transnational terrorists, criminal elements and numerous insurgent groups remain active.

"Attacks against military and civilian targets continue throughout the country, including inside the international zone. These attacks have resulted in deaths and injuries of American citizens. Planned and random killings are common as are kidnappings for ransom and political reasons."

"Overall security in Iraq is worsening," the embassy reports, "with kidnapping by criminal gangs and insurgents a particular problem. These bold, well-equipped, and sophisticated groups/gangs are terrorizing . . . businessmen [and] contractors," in addition to "the easy-to-nab odd journalists."

"Over 437 foreign nationals have been kidnapped since the war started," the report said.

The cable says those taken were from 60 nationalities, with the top six being "Turks, Jordanians, Americans, Lebanese, Egyptians, Nepalese."

"Foreigners of all walks of life have been kidnapped and murdered: diplomats, journalists, contractors, translators, soldiers, truck drivers, businessmen, telecom company employees, missionaries, laborers, [aid organization] workers, criminals, and even a tourist." (A tourist?) No one is immune, the report says. "Outspoken critics of the war who painted themselves as allies of the insurgency have been kidnapped, mistakenly believing that by aligning themselves with . . . the hostage takers, they could guarantee themselves an exemption from being targeted."

The report holds out hope for improvement in the security situation. "A stable government may be the first step in a reduction in political violence," the cable says. But, for now, "armed militia, loyal to various non-governmental entities, have limited to extensive control of parts of Baghdad and some cities in Iraq."

So be careful out there. "Shootings, kidnappings, suicide bombings (both pedestrian and vehicular) and mortar or rocket attacks are a constant threat in Baghdad," we're told. And don't bother calling 911. "The local police are poorly trained, poorly equipped and corrupt. . . . Americans have, in the past, called for and received assistance in emergencies from the U.S. military but the response time has been measured in hours, not minutes."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/06/AR2006060601293.html

Next, here's an AP report from April 2006, also (I believe) extracted from Bowen's work.

. . .

Barely one-third of the water-treatment projects the Americans planned will be completed. Only 32 percent of the Iraqi population has access to clean drinking water now, compared with 50 percent before the war, according to the U.S. special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction.

That doesn't jibe with what I read in the special inspector-general report I cited earlier. The report said (as I think it has in the past) that the estimates of pre-war drinking water acccess range from 9.5 million to 19 million Iraqis. That's a range of 2:1. The inspector general has thrown up his hands and no longer uses the pre-war / post-war metric. The report uses the metric of how many gallons or people will be added by U.S. efforts.

The AP report probably used past estimates of pre-war access. Still, AP should have had an asterisk: "We don't have a bloody clue the number of Iraqis that had access to clean water."

#34,

Power plants are long lead time items. For 1,000 MW jobs on the order of 3 to 5 years. 1 MW Diesel Gen sets are off the shelf. However, as some one pointed out you need diesel fuel. For the 1,000 MW jobs cooling water is also a requirement so you need a suitable site. Which may mean extending the grid.

BTW wars are a series of blunders leading to victory or defeat. To complain about blunders is to complain aboout the rain.

The best that can be done is to fix your mistakes when you realize you made one.

You will note that compared to many recent conflicts troop casualties and civilian casualties are amazingly light. This in the face of Islamic Imperialists who's prefered targets are civilians.

#22,

I have heard reports that the Iraqi economy is growing at a greater than 15% a year rate lately. That is pretty good for a country in the middle of a war.

"Power plants are long lead time items. For 1,000 MW jobs on the order of 3 to 5 years. 1 MW Diesel Gen sets are off the shelf. However, as some one pointed out you need diesel fuel. For the 1,000 MW jobs cooling water is also a requirement so you need a suitable site. Which may mean extending the grid."

Google "megawatt generators for sale".
Google "refineries for sale"
And I assume there are places to obtain diesel fuel even if you cant refine it locally. I've got this crazy idea in my head that when your neighbors include Saudi Arabia and Kuwait you might be able to get your hands on petroleum products.

You dont have to build these things from scratch, and even if you did has the president called the CEO of GE and asked them to run triple shifts turning out generator components to help win the war?

Enough excuse making. If you were building a hotel in Del Boca Vista i would listen to these excuses. If you are supposedly fighting a war they sound like a sick joke. Is anyone really willing to claim we are extending every fiber of possible effort as a nation to fix this problem? Anything remotely like that?

Imagine our troops were running out of ammunition and the ammo plants came back with this list of excuses as to how hard it is to keep up with production, etc, etc, etc. Thats exactly what it sounds like to me, and eventually the outcome is the same- dead American soldiers.

"BTW wars are a series of blunders leading to victory or defeat. To complain about blunders is to complain aboout the rain."

Blunders are one thing, what do you call 3 years of apathy and ineptitude? Going left when you should have gone right is a blunder. Sleeping on guard duty is dereliction of duty.

"Imagine our troops were running out of ammunition and the ammo plants came back with this list of excuses as to how hard it is to keep up with production, etc, etc, etc. Thats exactly what it sounds like to me, and eventually the outcome is the same- dead American soldiers."

Not a hypothetical -- that's exactly what DID happen with respect to armored HUMVEES and body armor for troops. A list of excuses and numerous dead soldiers before DoD finally made something happen.

Mark's point is dead on -- performance has been unpardonably bad even with regard to essential aspects of force protection. With regard to reconstruction activities, it has been orders of magnitude worse. This lack of fundamental seriousness on the part of the Administration has hopelessly compromised our objectives in Iraq and the broader Middle East.

I tried Googling "megawatt generators for sale" and got the following message: 'Your search - "megawatt generators for sale" - did not match any documents.' Looks like Mark Buehner might want to think a bit more before he writes.

Dr. Weevil:

If you put quotes around your Google search, Google looks for the exact phrase. You must have done this.

What Mark meant was to type the words inside the double quotes into Google, WITHOUT the double quotes.

You might want to think a bit more before you write.

Oh? I cant post the link but this seems to come back:

Results 1 - 10 of about 338,000 for megawatt generators for sale. (0.47 seconds

Take you own advice Doc.

Dr. Weevil, your google skills could perhaps be developed some more.

I tried "megawatt generator sale" and my first hit was

http://www.wabashpower.com/index.html

I clicked on Diesel generators and got a list of generators from 125KW to 2850KW. I clicked on 1000KW and found a used 1 megawatt generator for sale. 45000 pounds shipping weight, no price listed, immediate delivery.

The second hit was about a server farm that had a 1 MW backup generator.

http://www.brownmarine.com/power_plants.htm
The third was a company that sells generators. They had a 1MW generator that was "multifuel", they expected it to be of interest to refinery, biomass, landfill and gas well operators. And a 10 MW generator that burns liquid or gaseous fuel. (Some of their wording didn't make sense to me, it isn't my specialty. I got a vague sense they might not have meant what I think they did.) They also sell small refineries, 5000, 8500, and 30,000 B/Day in stock.

The fourth hit describes a 300 MB generator being sold in australia. But the date is July 2005, and they appear to have been asking more than $200M australian for it.

"This lack of fundamental seriousness on the part of the Administration has hopelessly compromised our objectives in Iraq and the broader Middle East."

You have GOT to be kidding.

Look up the Hughes Shovel some time. Probably THE most criminaly stupid piece of kit ever issued to any army anywhere, but there wasn't a single person after their introduction in WW1 who called it a "lack of fundamental seriousness". Talk to a vet of WW2, or Korea and they'll tell you all about kit shortages, ammo shortages, food shortages, and impossibly f*d up situations where reinforcements were unavailable for days at a time, yet I cannot find ONE SINGLE ARTICLE claiming that the administrations during those wars had "hopelessly compromised our objectives". Stop using your goddamn liberal American peacetime standards for every bloody thing. You have no concept of what it's like to try and rebuild a country while at the same time fighting an insurgency. Stop pretending that you have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

"Talk to a vet of WW2, or Korea and they'll tell you all about kit shortages, ammo shortages, food shortages, and impossibly f*d up situations where reinforcements were unavailable for days at a time,"

I dont agree that this adminstration is not serious, in fact i think they are deadly serious which is why I have (and do) support them through thick and thin. But that by no means changes the fact that what we are seeing them do vis-a-vis the electricity is inexplicable. Mistakes and shortages happen, but this is more than 3 years and many billions of dollars in. You would think that somebody in this administration would start wondering why the people who's hearts and minds we are trying to win are broiling in the desert sun despite 3 years and all this money. They just dont seem concerned with the timeframe, nor has there been any visable shakeup to change things.

Who's in charge of Iraq reconstruction btw? We know the ambassadors name, we know the head military honcho on the ground, we knew the provisional authority intimately. Yet who is the key guy in charge of reconstruction? I suggest there isnt particularly one, and there is half your problem right there.

It isnt right to equate this situation with the friction of war. If some 200 million dollar generator the US decided to buy from Australia and sail in to Basra sank- that's the fortunes of war. But that hasnt even been tried.

The fact that either nobody thought of buying generators or somebody made the command decision (WHO?) that they would all be built from scratch over 3 or 4 or 5 years needs to be addressed. The simple fact is that a well lit and chilled down Iraq in 2008 with a modern infastructure may simply be uselessly too late, while a scrapped together bubblegum and tinfoil Iraq circa 2003 (or 2006) might have presented us with a much more favorable set of circumstances today. But who decided this? Did anyone, or has it just worked itself out that way? These are non-trivial questions in the extreme, and it is flat out depressing that some of the answer are ranging from 'well, s%^t happens' to 'the United States is simply incapable of doing any better, we are giving 100% effort but the problem is intractable'. Neither of those answers is acceptable.

Another site full of oil refineries for sale.

This company refurbishes, relocates, and builds prefabricated refineries. They do things like this:

"PT Humpuss Pengolahan Minyak

A new 10,000 BPSD crude unit with a 4,000 BPSD hydrotreater and reformer were constructed for PT Humpuss Pengolahan Minyak on the Eastern end of Java. Ventech Engineers began with a crude assay and executed the purchasing, engineering, shipping, construction, and operator training for the facility, all within an eight-month period. "

"Koch Refining Company

Koch Refining Company needed a naphtha desulfurizer for their refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. Ventech supplied a surplus unit and relocated it from Louisiana. Surplus equipment resulted in a capital savings of 30% less than new unit cost. The project required only eight months - five months less than new unit construction."

"Ashland Petroleum Corporation

Ashland Petroleum Corporation had a 10,000 BPSD HDS Reformer Unit at their shut down refinery in Buffalo, New York that they wanted relocated to their St. Paul, Minnesota refinery. New soil conditions and a change in plot plan required extensive re-engineering. Despite severe weather conditions, Ventech completed the entire project within the course of a year."

This is the kind of American ingenuity im talking about. Dont tell me this stuff cant be done- there are companies that do it all the time apparently.

I think the refinery problem is coruption, not physical plants. Early on gas was bought from Turkey. I personally don't see any problem with that. Then the country was handed over to the Iraqi interim government and Turkey started getting stiffed. The government ordered gas, the Turks didn't get paid. They won't sell gasoline to Iraq anymore. Kuwait says it will sell gasoline once the government is formed.

You have no concept of what it's like to try and rebuild a country while at the same time fighting an insurgency.

Is that former conservative Mark Buehner you are referring to or the Bush Administration? OK, maybe it's hard. That doesn't really matter: we bungled the reconstruction for reasons that are numerous and in many cases reflect badly on us—US contractor corruption, refusal to work with Europeans, gross underestimate of security risks, etc. I'm skeptical that there was ever a genuine window of opportunity in Iraq, but the situation was vastly better in late 2003 and 2004, and during that time period we seem to have accomplished basically nothing tangible and the security situation has deteriorated dramatically.

What did Germany and Japan look like three years after their capitals fell? Bad, but not this bad. Amazing what those insurgents have accomplished in their last throes.

"It isnt right to equate this situation with the friction of war. If some 200 million dollar generator the US decided to buy from Australia and sail in to Basra sank- that's the fortunes of war. But that hasnt even been tried."

And when an almost completed generator gets blown up by an insurgent attack, THAT's the fortunes of war. And when your contractors start getting killed off and you have to hire more bodygaurds than builders, THAT's the fortunes of war. And when you're having difficulty getting fuel for the generators due to insurgents distrupting the supply, THAT's the fortunes of war. Need I go on?

What exactly do you think should have been done? Buy 3,000 1MW generators and stick them all over the country? Who's going to protect all those locations? Can we spare the personnel to service and fuel those gennies, while still having enough to build new power plants, rebuild towers, and re-connect cables? How much extra money will it cost? If it's not people like you whininmg that we're not spending enough, it's others bitching about all the money being wasted. It seems like you can only please 1% of Americans 1% of the time.

My problem with your argument isn't that you're neccesarily wrong, it's that you're being unrealistic, and approaching the situation from an EXTREMELY simplistic perspective.

"And when an almost completed generator gets blown up by an insurgent attack, THAT's the fortunes of war. And when your contractors start getting killed off and you have to hire more bodygaurds than builders, THAT's the fortunes of war. And when you're having difficulty getting fuel for the generators due to insurgents distrupting the supply, THAT's the fortunes of war. Need I go on?"

Can you? When your generator blows up you bring 50 more. When your contractors get killed you put soldiers around them. When your fuel supplies are disrupted you protect them or build your next generator next to the refinery which you put next to the oil wells and then you bury the transmition wires 10 feet under ground. You do whatever it takes to make it work. What you dont do is make a bunch of lame assed escuses that would make Patton take a baseball bat to his engineers if they tried to pedal it. Your being shot at? WERE AT WAR. Of course your being shot at. Do your job.

"What exactly do you think should have been done?"

That my friend is the question.

"Buy 3,000 1MW generators and stick them all over the country? Who's going to protect all those locations?"

No, you buy 15 500MW generators and stick them where you can protect them.

"Can we spare the personnel to service and fuel those gennies, while still having enough to build new power plants, rebuild towers, and re-connect cables? "

Damn well better be able to or we shouldnt have done this in the first place. A lot like wondering if you packed a big enough parachute at about 5000 feet and falling idnt it?

"How much extra money will it cost? If it's not people like you whininmg that we're not spending enough, it's others bitching about all the money being wasted. It seems like you can only please 1% of Americans 1% of the time."

I dont give a damn about who is pleased. I care about what works. You want to start haggling over money now? Seriously? How much have we pissed away to date? Anybody seriously even want to think about what an audit like that would turn up? You spend what it takes to win and if you arent willing to do that you pack it up and come home.

"My problem with your argument isn't that you're neccesarily wrong, it's that you're being unrealistic, and approaching the situation from an EXTREMELY simplistic perspective. "

Your problem is you dont seem to be willing to hold anyone accountable for anything and apparently no matter how pathetic the results are you refuse to question whether we are doing the right things and devoting enough to do them effectively. Thats a recipe for disaster. Simple? Listen, you're pulling mushed up dinosaurs out of the ground, boiling them till you get something you can burn, using that to boil water, spin a turbine, and shooting that over to the local family trying to keep their fridge turned on. Everything else must bow to that, and the concept is indeed that simple. Like Clausewitz said, in war the simplest things are very hard. Absolutely. But again, we dont get to choose to just do the easy things. But it seems like maybe this administration thinks it can do just that.

The problem is that you are trying to overcomplicate things in an attempt to protect whatever and whoever you desperately need to protect. All i give a damn about is winning this war, whatever that looks like anymore. If that means you buy a refinery and a generator off the shelf, put them in an oil well surrounded by soldiers, and bury your transmition lines so be it. But your counterargument is senseless because at each point in the chain there is abject failure and another set of excuses. It defies credulity to think this is indeed a well orchestrated affair with ample resources, but that we just cant seem to make anything work right at any point. Cant get the oil out, cant ship it, cant refine it, cant ship the fuel, dont have the genies if we did have the fuel, cant transfer the electricity if any of that worked anyway. No, I simply cant accept the fact that things are so F'd up over there and we are so hapless that nothing can go right. The answer is that nobody is over there actively making sure it goes right and spending whatever it takes and cutting whatever red tape they need to do so. That fits the facts.

Because if you are right, we are doomed anyway.

AJL,

TallDave, the same Brookings source we are all using says that while 3.1 million (they have 2.85, but I'll admit that figure may be old) Iraqis have been added to the water system, the total number of Iraqis with access to water has dropped by about one-third.

They're quoting a newspaper story, which was basing that on electrical problems, as I noted before. The reconstructors actually address that point directly in the SIGIR report linked above. Water/sewage infrastructure does not disappear, and we've been building more; there is much more today than prewar.

As far as the electricity generation, all these goals for 2008 are so much vaporware

Ridiculous. The plants are, in fact, coming online, though sometimes delayed. It isn't just powerpoint slides and prayers. Your statement has no basis in reality.

On oil and sewer, I guess you aren't even going to try to defend your original claim.

Sewer I addressed above (again; see the SIGIR report; sewage infrastructure doesn't disappear).

On oil, revenues are much higher than prewar ($3 billion in April, vs $15 billion for all of 2002). And now they're mostly going to a democratic gov't, instead of building palaces for Saddam.

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Asia-and-Oceania/Iraq-ECONOMY.html

Ridiculous. The software releases are, in fact, coming online, though sometimes delayed. It isn't just powerpoint slides and prayers. Your statement has no basis in reality.

None of the 2003, 2004, and 2005 estimates have been accurate. The 2008 numbers will turn into 2010, then 2015, do I hear 2050? (The story on US troop withdrawals is the same.)

Water and sewage capacity can indeed disappear if destroyed by aerial bombardment or postwar insurgent activity, or if the electricity needed to run treatment plants and pumping stations is unavailable, or if taken offline for repair/reconstruction/replacement by Cheneyburton and the re-opening is delayed (indefinitely). Your claim is so fatuous it clouds everything else that you say.

Table 117 (page 41) in the Brookings Report says that water and sewage are below pre-war estimates. Sewage capacity is down by two-thirds. Now, where are your getting your numbers from?

Andrew, the point is that TallDave believes the forecasts.

Like Charlie Brown and the football, he believes that this time Lucy won't snatch it away.

There's no arguing with that. He believes, you doubt. No way to bridge that gap unless he gets a crisis of faith or you become a believer too.

Track records are irrelevant. He believes that this time it will all work out.

AJL,

A power plant is not a software release. It has massive physical requirements that can be measured and tracked. You don't get 99% of the way done and then find out "Oh, there's not actually a power plant here." Stupid, inaccurate analogy.

I addressed the II numbers above. You just requoted them wthout addressing my point. Again, they're from a newspaper article and they appear to be based on ELECTRIC shortages that affect pumping ability. The actual sewerage capacity has vastly increased.

And as I pointed out, you were dead wrong on the others as well.

J Thomas,

What a crock. The plants are in fact going online. Read the freaking reports. These aren't pie-in-the-sky forecasts; several plants have already been brought online this year, and there's very little reason to think the others won't. There are progress reports.

It's not faith-based, it's paying attention to what's actually happening. Your perspective is based on... what? Initial estimates of capacity that proved optimistic years ago, due to infrastructure concerns that have nothing to do with whether these projects are c0mpleted? Get a clue, reality is moving on without you.

Here's the "vaporware" c0mpleted this week:

Construction is c0mplete on the installation of 33kV feeder lines in North Babil, Baghdad Province. The $115,000 project installed two new 33kV underground feeders from an older substation to a new substation. The project benefits approximately 11,500 residents in the North Babilneighborhood.
...
A sewage network project in Karadah, Baghdad Province has been c0mpleted. The $534,000 project was c0mpleted on May 22nd. The project scope included installing 6 km of pipe to eliminate sewage from area streets. The network collects sewage from residential and c0mmercial points and transports it to an area pump station. The c0mpleted project affects approximately 60,000 residents.
...
Al-SulaymaniyahSubstation Supplies Power for 5,000The Bardakaelectrical substation in Al-Sulaymaniyah, Al-SulaymaniyahProvince is c0mplete. The $3.4M substation project required the design and construction of a switchgear building and associated switching equipment, kitchen, offices, bathrooms, guardhouse and perimeter fence. The substation can provide electrical power to more than 5,000 homes in the area.

http://www.rebuilding-iraq.net/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PCO_CONTENT/HOME/DOWNLOADS/RECONSTRUCTION_UPDATE.PDF

All just imaginary, right? Haha.

One of the excuses pointed to in this very thread is the lack of fuel to run the plants. "This" (I take that back as the WOC Hal 900 has kicked back my link for using the dreaded C-O-M in the Wa-Po link. If anybody wants it email me)article from a year ago goes into some detail.
" State Department figures released in mid-April, for example, indicate that nearly 1,000 megawatts are "currently offline in unplanned outages" and that 341 of those are "due to insufficient fuel supplies.""

I've looked, and i cant find any evidence of a US funded project to either buy or build more refineries. The Iraqis themselves within about the last 6 months have drawn up plans to build several. Obviously this is not some out of the blue problem, but as far as I can tell it has never been addressed by either the CPA or the current US reconstruction regime. So whats the excuse on this one? Friction of war? Finding the paper work for buying or building a refinery is exactly like having one of your brigades take a wrong turn on the way into battle?

AJL:What did Germany and Japan look like three years after their capitals fell? Bad, but not this bad.

That is just an incredibly ignorant statement.

Yeah, they were doing great in May 1948. Their cities lay in ruins, Europe spent two years in near-starvation, and major European reconstruction under ECA hadn't even formally STARTED three years after the war.

Tokyo was heavily bombed, and much of the city was burned to the ground by heavy bombardment by B-29 and other aircraft.

Sustained aerial bombardment meant that most major cities had been badly damaged, with industrial production especially hard-hit. Many of the continent's greatest cities, including Warsaw and Berlin, lay in ruins. Others, such as London and Rotterdam, had been severely damaged. The region's economic structure was ruined, and millions had been made homeless. Although the Dutch famine of 1944 had abated with an influx of aid, the general devastation of agriculture had led to conditions of starvation in several parts of the continent, which was to be exacerbated by the particularly harsh winter of 1946-1947 in northwestern Europe.

The first substantial aid went to Greece and Turkey in January 1947, which were seen as being on the front lines of the battle against c0mmunist expansion and were already being aided under the Truman Doctrine. Initially the UK had supported the anti-c0mmunist factions in those countries, but due to its dire economic condition it requested the U.S. to continue its efforts. The ECA formally began operation in July 1948.

Sheesh, learn some history.

Mark,

They've been talking about building them for some time.

Iraq is to ask foreign c0mpanies to bid for a $1bn new oil refinery project later this month which is 70km north-west of Baghdad, reported Bloomberg. The Al Nahrain or two rivers project is for a 140,000 bpd refinery to process Basra crude. Iraq presently has to spend $2bn a year on importing fuel products.

http://www.ameinfo.c0m/64549.html

Refineries seem to take a long time to build. They were saying 7 years, iirc, in a recent article about U.S. expansion, so it might have been ruled out of scope for Iraqi reconstruction.

In the short run, I think the electric problem isn't just production, but transport.

TallDave,
Not to mention that in the initial year, German citizens were rationed to 1500 calories daily and many were not getting more than 1000. Of course, that was improved briefly and then, close to the three year mark, Berlin was again nearly starved out of food and fuel by blockade.

Who knows what will end up happening in Baghdad - these sectarian killings may go on at this level for years and years.

What is more worrisome is the fighting between Shiite groups.

Like what has been happening in Basra

If that can't be controlled - and the violence has been getting worse - in this once calm city - you may be looking at decades of Mogadishu-like chaos. I don't think that will happen in Basra, others, but it is still a possibility.

"They've been talking about building them for some time."

I dont think i really need to tee this one up.

"Refineries seem to take a long time to build. They were saying 7 years, iirc, in a recent article about U.S. expansion, so it might have been ruled out of scope for Iraqi reconstruction."

The company Ven-tech I referenced yesterday was building them all over the world in a year or less. They built a 10,000 BPSD refinery in Java in 8 months including right up to training the personel. (I own no stock in this company).

There is a saying in music producing, but I find it applies to just about anything:
You can have it fast, have it cheap, or have it done expectionally well. Pick 2 of those.

You can do just about anything extraordinarilly fast if you have enough money and are willing to deal with holding it together with shoe strings.

"In the short run, I think the electric problem isn't just production, but transport."

Then build the refineries next to the oil wells next to the generators and just have the power lines to worry about.

Mark,

Well, you talk before you build. Very few major projects get built without talking about it first. In this case "talking" also means "soliciting bids."

Ventech is an internationally recognized leader in the design and construction of medium and small capacity refineries.

Maybe they wanted a large refinery.

We managed to supply Berlin with four hours of electricity a day during the 1948 blockade. Before it was of course much higher. Four hours a day? Hmmm. That's all we can manage in Baghdad right now. And that's spending the total amount of the entire Marshall Plan ($13.3 Billion) every couple months.

Mark Buehner is absolutely right: our accomplishments in Iraqi infrastructure are, with respect to the alleged importance of the task (he and I don't agree there; I don't think Bush finds anything important other than defeating Democrats) and the money spent is simply pathetic.

"Well, you talk before you build. Very few major projects get built without talking about it first. In this case "talking" also means "soliciting bids.""

Yeh. You also send out surveyors, get zoned, submit for building permits, get an environmental impact statement, send your donation to your local congressman, put an ad in your industry magazine, haggle over of the color of the carpeting, and hire the local pipefitters to put in a solid 32 hour work week. Oh, and dont forget the ribbon cutting. Did I mention this is a vital project in a vital war? Did they solicit bids when they built the floating harbors at Normandy? Come on Dave, 3 years is a long time to talk consider this thing may already be too late. I think our definitions of time critical may be differing.

"Ventech is an internationally recognized leader in the design and construction of medium and small capacity refineries.

Maybe they wanted a large refinery."

Maybe they wanted the ground to shoot pre-refined deisel straight out. It doesnt matter, what matters is what it takes to get the job done. Again, WHO are THEY? Who are they and why do they get to decide to spend 3 years discussing building the perfect instead of doing the good enough now? Thats my question. The question is valid because the thought process has been faulty. Assumedly the same people are still in their positions, and they clearly need to be replaced.

Accuracy check: the Marshall Plan cost $13 billion back in the 1940's. If you're going to compare it to modern day expenditures, you have to use its present day value of roughly $130 billion. We haven't even begun to approach that level of spending for reconstruction on Iraq--IIRC we're around $40 billion total spent (though the "allocated" number may be higher).

Not to mention, we weren't fighting a major insurgency in Europe while spending all the cash of the Marshall Plan. Security costs are eating up significant portions of reconstruction efforts in Iraq--an average of 22% and going up to 36% of costs, according to this article. A relevant section:

I suspect the situation in Berlin, Tokyo, etc would have been much different and much more expensive if they had a bunch of skinheads or wannabe samurai running around killing people. You can't compare peacetime rebuilding costs with wartime project costs.

The Marshall Plan would also have been a lot different if big chunks of it had been done with a single-source cost-plus contract with no penalties for nondelivery.

Well, Unbeliever, if you want to be precise, wouldn't you have to look at how many people the Marshall Plan helped? The population of West Germany, France, and Italy was about 130 million. (We'll just skip the smaller countries, totalling millions more.) The population of Iraq today is about 26 million. Except the Marshall Plan accomplished quite a lot, and the Iraq Reconstruction—perhaps for the reason mentioned in post #88—very little.

No, because I'm not interested in inventing new metrics for the sole purpose of propping up your bad comparison. Since when do we decide foreign aid based on "number of people helped per dollar spent"? Did someone erase 200+ years of idealism, ban strategic thinking in our foreign policy, and replace it all with strict Utilitarianism when I wasn't looking?

Heck, if we used your $/person metric, we should never send troops or money anywhere but sub-Saharan Africa or rural India. I'm sure $13 billion back in the 1940's would have prevented millions of deaths from disease, famine, and war in Africa, and maybe turned it into a democratic, industrialized society. Sure, Europe would be in ruins, we might get Hitler v2.0 thanks to the re-ruined economies, etc... but by golly, just imagine the ROI per person we could get!

So Iraq's population is roughly 20% of the Marshall Plan's recipients back in the 1940's, yet Iraqi reconstruction has only cost roughly 30% of what the Marshall Plan cost. That's not too bad a "premium" for conducting Iraqi reconstruction while the war is still going on--what do you think the total cost of the Marshall Plan would have been if we started it back in 1941, while the Blitz was still wrecking the UK's industrial base?

The fact remains that you cannot compare the Marshall Plan with OIF; it fails on both an absolute dollar basis and on a wartime-vs-peacetime basis.

Unbeliever, thank you ror your concise explanation. You have showed us some of the reasons why the Marshall Plan succeeded but iraq reconstruction is failing so badly.