BBC: 50% Iraq w/o water, 25% w/ food hand outs...1.8 mil barrel oil/day

[rainbow4321]

Yeah, we've done wonders over there..how can they ever thank us :sarcasm: Lot of good all THEIR oil is doing them.


Found these stats on a BBC webpage, it's Iraq by the numbers, a day's worth of stats:

June 7th:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4597315.stm

1,800,000 barrels of oil produced

25 percent of Iraqis completely dependent on government food hand-outs

50 percent of Iraqis with no access to safe drinking water
Source: UNDP/Iraqi Government

13 hours of electricity in Baghdad (approximate)
Source: Baghdad residents

4 hours of electricity in Basra (approximate)
Source: Basra residents

[wtmusic]

1. 12M Iraqis with no safe water this summer?

could be a disaster

[xray s]

2. Can you imagine how Americans would react under those conditions

Then throw in an occupying army in the US that doesn't speak English and shoots up anything that moves at roadblocks...we'd go fucking apeshit.

Bush is really a bloody jackass.

[TahitiNut]

3. But, but ... they're not like us.

:sarcasm:

[burythehatchet]

9. false analogy...they're not white.

[SpiralHawk]

11. They're not True-Believing (TM) Christians

Who elevate a book above a natural, respectful feeling for Spirit.

Ooops...wait a minute. Are we talking about Iraqis or Republicans?

[Erika]

4. 25% completely dependent on government handouts?

Intermittent electricity? How very sad.

To see our sadness go to www.icasualties.org

[whatgives]

5. A suggestion

your argument would be much better if you compared the conditions before the war with the situation after the war. Just a thought.:applause:

[julianer]

8. Do you mean during sanctions?

We've been killing Iraqis for fifteen years now.

Perhaps for a fair comparison you'd have to go back to the nineteen eighties.

[rainbow4321]

16. Yep..here is stuff from before the first time.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/11151382.htm

The country now ranks near the bottom of the world's economies in per capita income. Sputtering electrical power is another ordeal for Iraqis, paralleling the country's long economic decline.


Despite stratospheric prices, Iraq has earned only about $31 billion from oil exports since the invasion, far below the prewar predictions of U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who said Iraqi oil could generate $50 billion to $100 billion over two or three years. Production has yet to regain Saddam-era levels. In 2005 it has even slipped from low 2004 levels. Insurgent sabotage cost Iraq $7 billion in oil revenue last year alone, according to the oil ministry.

Before U.S. bombing knocked out 60 percent of Iraq's generation capacity in the 1990-91 Gulf War, Iraq churned out as much as 9,000 megawatts of electricity a day, Iraqi power officials have said. After Saddam hurriedly patched the grid, it produced around 4,400 daily megawatts.

U.S. engineers promised to increase production to 6,000 megawatts of consistent power by last June. Instead, the reverse happened. On March 4, a U.S. reconstruction official said that just 3,850 megawatts were generated the previous day. Iraq now averages just 8.5 hours of electricity a day, with some provinces getting as little as five hours, according to U.S. State Department figures. Last June, there was power 12 to 14 hours a day.

----------------------
With ALL the money we are putting into this hand over fist we still are not getting the place up to speed. But these are all stats we won't see in OUR papers on a regular basis.

[burythehatchet]

10. was it worse before?

[deliusmax]

15. The average oil output before the war was 2.5 million barrels,

so production is 700,000 barrels short of what it used to be, more than two years after the start of the war, and half a year after the "elections". Check it on the bbc website.



The other numbers are harder to verify, but the widely respected medical journal the lancet estimated that an additional 100,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the war, mainly because of a sharp decrease in living standards, availability of drinking water etc.
Other estimates vary from 15,000 to 200,000 dead Iraqis.

How do YOU think that compares to the pre-war conditions?
:(

[rainbow4321]

17. "Electricity and clean water were still below prewar levels"

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922747.html

The deteriorating security situation was harshly criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike, who questioned whether the Pentagon had adequately prepared for an insurgency and deployed enough troops. Reconstruction efforts, hampered by bureaucracy and security concerns, had also fallen woefully short of expectations: by September, just 6% ($1 billion) of the reconstruction money approved by Congress in 2003 had in fact been used. Electricity and clean water were still below prewar levels, and half of Iraq's employable population was still without work.

With few palpable signs of reconstruction to generate good will toward the U.S., American troops often faced a bitter and hostile populace. As a senior U.S. military officer put it, “We can either put Iraqis back to work, or we can leave them to shoot RPGs at us.” A highly classified July 2004 national intelligence estimate offered pessimistic assessments of Iraq's future over the next year, ranging from “tenuous” stability at best to civil war at worst.

-------------------

Then we have our other all but forgotten war: 114 cases pre-war, epidemic now:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=25614&mesg_id=25614

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top15jun14,0,2344691.story

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan capital is on the verge of a cholera epidemic, with more than 2,000 cases of the disease and at least eight deaths reported in recent weeks, a health expert warned Tuesday. Afghanistan's Health Ministry on Monday confirmed up to 300 cases, but claimed they have been dealt with and there had been no fatalities. It said there was no risk of the disease spreading.

But on Tuesday, Fred Hartman, technical director for a USAID-backed health and development program, told The Associated Press that eight or nine people had died in the past two weeks, and warned the disease could spread quickly throughout the city's 4 million population. "An epidemic is about to break out here. Over two thousand cases have been reported so far," said Hartman, who has been involved with efforts to contain the outbreak. "There are always deaths with cholera," he said.

Hartman said the government was well-equipped to deal with the outbreak and had set up an emergency task force to ensure that hospitals have the necessary equipment and medicine to treat patients. He said the disease had been detected in wells around the city, the source of drinking water for most of the city's residents, as well as irrigation ditches. Cholera is a major killer in developing countries, where it is spread mainly through contaminated food or water. The bacterium attacks the intestine and causes severe diarrhea and dehydration.

In 2001, 114 people died from a cholera outbreak in Afghanistan's north, according to the World Health Organization's Web site. It had not information on the latest cases.

[Erika]

6. Iraq now has temperatures daily well above 100 degrees

Think about our troops out there on patrols.

[LuPeRcALiO]

20. They volunteered, remember?

Iraqis didn't. But yeah, they're all victims of an insanely stupid war.

[Coexist]

7. kick

great stuff. And this was a day THIS MONTH, not during the "early days" of the war.

[bigtree]

12. disgusting

Bush breaks everything he touches

[PATRICK]

13. Venezuela and Iraq

Sooo, it may be a little apples and oranges, but how does the oil productivity of both countries compare to the benefits received by the people and their infrastructure of services?

The odd thing is the Bushistas blame their enemies for BOTH outcomes.

[Felix Mala]

14. But they reopened every school and hospital they bombed!

[julianer]

18. They need new targets!

[LuPeRcALiO]

19. Sure they did.

Reopened them as temporary morgues.

[rman]

22. after making a buck by rebuilding them

whereas in fact the Iraqi's are very capable of (re)building anything themselves - but then the transnational corporations could not make of profit off of it.

[Roland99]

21. Read the whole article from the BBC: One Day in Iraq: At-a-glance

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1854872&mesg_id=1854872

[rman]

23. Should be compared to the situation before,

and should include war casualties.

Then we can talk to those who claim things are better now in Iraq.

[Greybnk48]

24. But there's a Burger King in the green zone

for the soldiers and a Subway in Tikrit. That must go over well with the locals. I asked my daughter if her S.O. needed us to send more protein bars for him to eat and he let us know he can buy them right there and that he had eaten at Burger King the last two nights.

He was just home and told us the smell in areas of Bagdad was horrendous because there is no sanitation. Butchers throw guts right into the streets because they have to. He's been taught that the Iraqis have always lived in squalor...very sad.