The Power Struggle

New York Times:

Over the past six months, Baghdad has been all but isolated electrically, Iraqi officials say, as insurgents have effectively won their battle to bring down critical high-voltage lines and cut off the capital from the major power plants to the north, south and west.

The battle has been waged in the remotest parts of the open desert, where the great towers that support thousands of miles of exposed lines are frequently felled with explosive charges in increasingly determined and sophisticated attacks, generally at night. Crews that arrive to repair the damage are often attacked and sometimes killed, ensuring that the government falls further and further behind as it attempts to repair the lines.

And in a measure of the deep disunity and dysfunction of this nation, when the repair crews and security forces are slow to respond, skilled looters often arrive with heavy trucks that pull down more of the towers to steal as much of the valuable aluminum conducting material in the lines as possible. The aluminum is melted into ingots and sold.

It's hard to build (or re-build) a country with no power. Will President Bush's long-awaited speech address such important issues as "making sure the country has sustainable power?" Why can't the repair crews get more protection; is everyone guarding the oil?

This war has been an economical and foreign relations disaster. Half-ass tactics at every step, all in an attempt to fight a group of terrorist who weren't even there in the first place. We can't train anyone properly, can't build anything without it being blown up, and even if we could, we can't keep the power stations secure enough to keep such facilities open.

If Bush doesn't start talking strategy, and by that I mean "this is how we accomplish our goals," his January speech may as well be the phone book.