[lbo-talk] 7,200 Kilometers of Pipelines, 19,000 Kilometers of Power Lines

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Sep 20 20:26:38 PDT 2003


Foreign occupiers simply cannot restore power (in both senses of the word) to the Iraqi people.

Exhibit A: 7,200 Kilometers (4,500 Miles) of Pipelines:

"Iraq's three state-owned oil companies are reported to currently have a total of some 5,000 security men, but there are more than 4,500 miles of pipelines crisscrossing Iraq's desert" (Charles Recknagel, "Saboteurs Go for Iraq's Jugular," _Asia Times_, Jul 9, 2003, <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG09Ak02.html>).

Exhibit B: 19,000 Kilometers (11,875 Miles) of Power Lines

Iraq has "19,000 kilometers of power lines" (Peter Slevin and Vernon Loeb, "Bremer: Iraq Effort to Cost Tens of Billions," _Washington Post_, August 27, 2003, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A50396-2003Aug26>).

"Given the scale of the task, the architects of America's war appear remarkably untroubled. 'For a city that's not supposed to have power, there's lights all over the place. It's like Chicago,' Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said earlier this month after a night-time Blackhawk helicopter tour over Baghdad. Unfortunately, Chicago it is not. Iraq's current total power output is 3,362 megawatts. That may not be far off the 4,000MW being produced just before the war but it falls a long way short of today's demand, estimated at between 7,000 and 20,000MW" (Rory McCarthy, "Not a Lot Like Chicago," _Guardian_, September 17, 2003, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1043620,00.html>).

Exhibit C: US Troops

"Of the army's 33 active-duty combat brigades, only three are described as free for a new mission. Twenty-one are deployed overseas, 16 in Iraq, and the others are earmarked for missions, such as in Afghanistan, are rebuilding their ranks, or are standing by in the United States in case of some emergency" (Thom Shanker, "Pentagon Grapples with Troop Shortage," _New York Times/International Herald Tribune_, July 21, 2003, <http://rasa.iht.com/articles/103439.htm>).

"U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said. . . . Though conditions have improved, the problems raise new concerns about the Pentagon's growing global reliance on defense contractors for everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance. Civilians help operate Navy Aegis cruisers and Global Hawk, the high-tech robot spy plane. Civilian contractors may work well enough in peacetime, critics say. But what about in a crisis? 'We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kinds of functions,' Lt. Gen. Charles S. Mahan, the Army's logistics chief, said in an interview. One thing became clear in Iraq. 'You cannot order civilians into a war zone,' said Linda K. Theis, an official at the Army's Field Support Command, which oversees some civilian logistics contracts. 'People can sign up to that -- but they can also back out'" (David Wood, "Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows in Iraq," Newhouse News Service, <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0731-09.htm>).

"I have heard some say it [the ratio of support personnel to actual war-makers] is as high as 7 to 1. So with 140,000 troops in Iraq, that means only 20,000 are at the pointy-end of the spear -- actually trying to bring some peace and order in the chaos" (Miles O'Brien, "Boots on the Ground," _CNN.com_, August 29, 2003).

"More than 180,000 U.S. military personnel are currently involved in the occupation of Iraq -- about 150,000 of them deployed in Iraq itself and the rest supporting the occupation from neighboring countries (primarily Kuwait). According to the Department of Defense (DoD), the occupation is costing about $3.9 billion a month to sustain. . . . CBO's work focused on determining how large an occupation the U.S. military could sustain in Iraq indefinitely -- while still maintaining acceptable levels of military readiness and not jeopardizing the quality of the all-volunteer force -- under various policy options. Those options include using only combat troops from the Army's active component for the occupation, employing other existing U.S. ground forces as well, and expanding current forces to incorporate two additional Army divisions. CBO's analysis indicates that the active Army would be unable to sustain an occupation force of the present size beyond about March 2004 if it chose not to keep individual units deployed to Iraq for longer than one year without relief (an assumption consistent with DoD's current planning). . . . In the six to 12 months after March, the level of U.S. forces in Iraq would begin to decline as units that had been deployed for a year were relieved and were not replaced on a one-for-one basis" (footnotes omitted, Congressional Budget Office, "An Analysis of the U.S. Military's Ability to Sustain an Occupation of Iraq," September 3, 2003, <http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4515&sequence=0>).

Exhibit D: Successful Sabotage by the Iraqi Resistance

"Unidentified persons bring down high-voltage transmission towers that supply electricity to Baghdad, often by shooting them with rocket-propelled grenades or other explosive devices, the aid workers said. At least two electricity towers near the road, about 150 km northwest of Baghdad, are twisted and bent at the top. The power lines that used to be hooked to the towers are lying on the road. Once a power line is on the ground, looters usually strip them of valuable copper and aluminum wire. 'As they drive around the country, the repair workers often see lines on the ground just days after they've been fixed,' Ahmed explained" (IRIN-Asia, "Damage to Power Lines Hits Baghdad Residents Hard," September 11, 2003, <http://electroniciraq.net/news/1080.shtml>).

Exhibit E: $20 Billion -- Minimum Price of Iraqi Power Network Restoration

"Iraq needs $20 billion to revive its crippled power supply, hit by postwar sabotage and dilapidation caused by years of U.N. trade sanctions, an Iraqi minister said on Saturday. 'We need twenty billion dollars in the next three years to at least bring the power production up to 18,000 megawatts (MW),' Iraq's newly-appointed Electricity Minister Ayham Sameraei told a news conference. He said that was the estimate of his ministry and the U.S.-led civil administration which has been ruling Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government five months ago" (Hassan Hafidh, "Iraq Says It Needs $20 Bln to Rebuild Power Network," Reuters, September 13, 2003, <http://www.forbes.com/iraq/newswire/2003/09/13/rtr1080918.html>).

Exhibit F: $6.0 Billion -- the Sum of Bush's Request for Electric Power in Iraq

"$6.0 billion for electric power" (Richard B. Stevenson, "78% of Bush's Postwar Spending Plan Is for Military," _New York Times_, September 9, 2003).

Exhibit G: Casualties of War and Occupation

Iraq Body Count: <http://www.iraqbodycount.net/>

Iraq Coalition Casualties: <http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx>

***** Agence France Presse September 19, 2003 Friday SECTION: International News LENGTH: 179 words HEADLINE: US soldier electrocuted in Iraq DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Sept 19

BODY: An American soldier was electrocuted while clearing away low-hanging power lines from a road north of Baghdad, the US military said Friday.

A statement said the soldier from the 4th Infantry Division was felled about 3:00 pm (1100 GMT) Thursday on a main road south of the town of Ad-Dujayl, 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Baghdad.

"The soldier's unit was clearing dangerously low-hanging power lines when he apparently touched a power line that was still active and suffered severe electrical shock," the statement said.

He died later in a field hospital. The name of the serviceman was withheld pending notification of next of kin.

About 100 American soldiers have died in Iraq in what the military calls "non-hostile" incidents since President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1.

A total of 79 have been killed in action over the same period, including three soldiers who died in an ambush late Thursday near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad. *****

Exhibit H: Costs of War and Occupation in Perspectives

***** The New York Times September 9, 2003, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 1; Foreign Desk LENGTH: 923 words HEADLINE: THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: U.S. BUDGET; 78% of Bush's Postwar Spending Plan Is for Military BYLINE: By RICHARD W. STEVENSON DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 8

BODY: President Bush's $87 billion request for postwar costs is heavily weighted to maintaining military operations, with $65.5 billion directed to the armed forces, $15 billion toward rebuilding Iraq and $5 billion toward building its security forces, and $800 million to new spending for civilian programs in Afghanistan, administration officials said today. . . .

To put the request into a different kind of perspective, the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group, said $87 billion is roughly equivalent to two years of unemployment benefits, 87 times what the federal government spends on after-school programs and more than 10 times the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency. . . .

Putting the Amount in Context

Federal budget

The $87 billion is equivalent to: 4 percent of the entire proposed budget for the 2004 fiscal year 11 percent of proposed discretionary spending 20 percent of nonmilitary discretionary spending 163 percent of discretionary spending on education

Wars and post-conflict efforts

Marshall Plan: $100 billion Postwar Japan: $19 billion World War II: $4.9 trillion Vietnam: $600 billion 1991 Gulf war: $84 billion U.S. share: $6.4 billion Kosovo (to date): $9 billion

Figures are approximate and adjusted for inflation

(Sources by White House; Congressional Research Service; Coalition Provisional Authority and Defense Department documents provided by Congressional sources) *****

-- Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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