No, I don't want Saddam back...

I just want NOT to have idiots and thieves running OUR government anymore.

Despite the fact that Iraq and U.S. officials have made water projects among their top priorities, the percentage of Iraqis without access to decent water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since the start of the U.S.-led war, according to an analysis by Oxfam International last summer. The portion of Iraqis lacking decent sanitation was even worse -- 80 percent.

That's from an AP story this morning.

There's some good news.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , using more than $1 billion in reconstruction funds, is building massive water treatment plants in urban areas, including one in the slums of Baghdad's Sadr City.

Construction crews over the last three years, working there under heavy guard, have constructed a treatment plant that will produce an additional 25 million gallons of drinking water daily, enough for nearly 200,000 people. Miles of new water lines are also being installed, allowing 2 million of Sadr City's residents to tap directly into the new plant and existing water supplies.

In Nasiriyah, a $277 million water treatment facility is to be handed over to Iraqis in December. It is billed as the largest facility of its kind in Iraq and is designed to provide clean drinking water for an estimated half-million people in southern Iraq .

As many as 1,500 water treatment and sewage projects have been completed, with 150 more in progress, according to the corps of engineers.

And some bad news:

Electricity, which is needed to power pumps, continues to be unreliable in many parts of Iraq , causing some taps to go dry because pumping stations and water treatment plants can't operate.

Oh, and Oxfam is concerned that the water projects will ever get up and running because of "security issues."

The Army is doing what it can over there, but they are trying to clean up a mess made by thieves and idiots...and sociopaths.

As I've said before, they poison everything they touch.

Comments

[Sunny Jim]

Hey Lance, thanks for that next-to-last link up there to the Mahablog. It's been around a couple of years (where have I been?) but I just visited for the first time. I have been reading through its archives and would just like to note that 1.) Her preferred style is to do the digging and the research and pull out from among the other blogs a very well-put, ironclad argument, to which she adds her own comments and 2.) this is one of those cases where you can just tell pretty quickly that you are in the presence of a good writer.

Further, there has to be 150 items on her recommended blog list but only two blogs - yours and James Wolcott's - have been singled out under a separate category called 'Great Literature'. I would call that a pretty darn nice compliment.

Cheers.