" Despite $2 Billion Spent, Residents say Baghdad is Crumbling"

[GreenPartyVoter]

BAGHDAD - Talib Abu Younes put his lips to a glass of tap water recently and watched worms swimming in the bottom.

Electricity flickers on and off for two hours in Muthana Naim's south Baghdad home then shuts off for four in boiling July heat that shoots above 120 degrees.

Fadhel Hussein boils buckets of sewage-contaminated water from the Tigris River to wash the family's clothes.

The capital is crumbling around angry Baghdadis. Narrow concrete sewage pipes decay underground and water pipes leak out more than half the drinking water before it ever reaches a home, according to the U.S. military.

Over 18 months, American officials spent almost $2 billion to revive the capital ravaged by war and neglect, according to Army Gen. William G. Webster, who heads the 30,000 U.S. and foreign troops and 15,000 Iraqi soldiers known collectively as Task Force Baghdad. But the money goes for long-term projects that yield few visible results and for security to protect the construction sites from sabotage.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0726-07.htm

[ananda]

1. obviously, shock and awe is..

.. working, on me.

Shocked but not surprised,

Sue

[peacetalksforall]

2. That's the way they like it - more contracts.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. That's PNAC for you

[CrispyQ]

4. $2 billion out of how many billions?

Those poor people. What BFEE has done to them is criminal.

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. and yet they won't be going to court for it