The Opinionated Bastard

Infrastructure is the most difficult to protect. We elected to build the nationwide infrastructure before working on local needs. The reasoning was that much of Iraq had little or no electricity under Saddam, while his base in the Sunni triangle had electric 24/7. Iraq is currently at or above generation goals, but demand has skyrocketed with the booming economy. Think two million cell phones to charge versus eleven thoudsand before the war if you want a simple example.

The other problem with electric is that there are some parts that you just don’t order off the shelf. Many items are made to order and take a year or more to manufacture. Add that to the problem of antiquated and outdated equipment for which there are no replacement parts, and you begin to understand why it’s been difficult.

Iraq, despite its oil wealth, lacks refining capacity. Much of the gasoline used in the country is imported. Generators are great, but the huge ones take time to construct, and run on fuels that Iraq does not have in quantity.

I think you’ll see some dramatic improvements in the next 3-6 months as some of the orders from last year come on line.

Sewer, Water, Electricity, Trash.

SWET is the key to winning…

Don’t remember where I read that (probably StrategyPage), but when an area gets SWET, the locals turn in the terrorists…

OB:

How about that big yellow area in the west (Al Anbar province), what do they think of us Over There? It seems to me “not too highly” based on the news reports over the last week.

I noticed you had a few posts during June and July saying that things were actually improving in Iraq but that you haven’t said anything at all this week about the actual war. I don’t blame you since Over There is a bit easier on the eyes and ears than the actual war. The actual war actually contradicts the rosy picture you’ve been passing off here.

Or perhaps you’ve been so busy with Over There that you’ve missed the actual war news over the last week or so: 6 Marine snipers ambushed and killed - 14 Marines killed by a single IED in their unarmored amphibious vehicle. Maybe you’re waiting for Brookings to tell you what you think.

In the meantime, keep watching Over There and telling yourself, “we’ve turned the corner, we’ve turned the corner…”

No, actually, I’m just still working on the post, because I decided to go to the data underlying the Brookings data.

For the record, August is going to be a bad month. The large number of deaths in August so far, and its only the 5th, plus a large operation going on is going to push up US casualties quite a bit.

incredibly funny, as usual. in 1991 destroying SWET was the prime motive for victory, and allowing 1,000,000 Iraqis to die by not allowing them to rebuild SWET was open US policy throughout the last decad.

I laugh at all this. i enjoy reading the confusions you put forth. it must be very hard to keep reality from your consciousness…does it hurt?

ernie

Ernie! You’re back! I was worried you were ill!

I long ago posted that we’d been inconsistent with Iraq. Remember? Debunking Iraq Myths?

Came here via Global Guerillas —— your graphic (quite nice) and your analysis do not agree with each other: “we have trouble in the Red areas, and they love us in the green areas.” No dispute about three provicnces of Kurdistan both being Green and “loving us” however Salah Ah Din province, home of Tikrit has good electricity and has a large local population that is shooting at the US forces as well as Iraqi security forces.

Using the axiom that you are using, one would predict that Anbar and Baghdad are less violent than Maysan or An Najaf —- however that is not the case.

I do not believe that we can draw the conclusions that you are trying to draw that increased public services will lead to lower levels of violence as Anbar and Baghdad have more public services (electricity in this case) than most of the Shi’ite dominated south, but the South is the relatively peaceful part of the Arab portion of the country.

To follow up on the messy and not as good as it should have been comment that I submitted last night, the graph does not directly support the argument that you seem to be making that areas with better SWET, in this case electricity should see less insurgent operations for a variety of reasons including increased friendliness of the population to a central governing authority that can deliver a reasonable level of public goods than areas that have poorer SWET levels.

Using the very basic axiom that you propose, one would expect heavy fighting in Najaf, and Maysan province, as these areas are red this month, and yellow last month, while we would expect less fighting in the AOR of the 42cd Infantry Division, and Salah Ah Din Province, home of Tikrit as that area has received green for electricity in the past two months. However that is not the case —- the US is hitting more combat in Sunni dominated areas and drmatically less combat in Shi’ite dominated areas.

I think overlaying ethnicities on the map would be a better first glance predictor of combat activity than relying on a province by province electrical map.

Sorry about the double post, I did not see that last night’s comment came up while I was typing my second comment.