With yet another outrage having befallen Baghdad today when a Christian church was bombed - and by the way, the Christian community of some 1 million before the Iraq War now reduced to about 200,000 - one has to wonder what the War really achieved. The country has been decimated, people have left for other countries and Iraq doesn't even have a Government.
Paul McGeough was one of the few journalists to stick it out during the invasion of Iraq - and not as an embedded journalist either. He reported fearlessly, both for the print media and tv, as things really were. Not what the military wanted us to know.
He recently reported in the SMH on his return to Iraq:
"Dora's output of just 300 megawatt of power, compared with a design capacity of 640MW, is a revelation of the failure in much of Washington's investment of more than $US4.5 billion in restoring power to Iraq.
Within days of the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003, a senior American officer predicted to reporters in Baghdad that "we'll have power rolling in 48 hours." More than seven years later, output is up just 50 per cent on the 4000MW production of the Saddam era – but still way below the voracious demand at the height of this year's broiling summer – 13000MW.
Throw any question on the power crisis to the engineer Sinan Taha and he starts with the same words – "the reasons are many." He begins with the example he knows best – Dora. The last time any of his huge generators were overhauled was in 1989."
Read the report, in full, here.
Paul McGeough was one of the few journalists to stick it out during the invasion of Iraq - and not as an embedded journalist either. He reported fearlessly, both for the print media and tv, as things really were. Not what the military wanted us to know.
He recently reported in the SMH on his return to Iraq:
"Dora's output of just 300 megawatt of power, compared with a design capacity of 640MW, is a revelation of the failure in much of Washington's investment of more than $US4.5 billion in restoring power to Iraq.
Within days of the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003, a senior American officer predicted to reporters in Baghdad that "we'll have power rolling in 48 hours." More than seven years later, output is up just 50 per cent on the 4000MW production of the Saddam era – but still way below the voracious demand at the height of this year's broiling summer – 13000MW.
Throw any question on the power crisis to the engineer Sinan Taha and he starts with the same words – "the reasons are many." He begins with the example he knows best – Dora. The last time any of his huge generators were overhauled was in 1989."
Read the report, in full, here.
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