IRAQ IS DYING OF THIRST/ DOES ANYONE CARE ?

Allen L Roland's Radio Weblog

...U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker acknowledged to reporters July 19th that Baghdad residents were receiving on average only one hour of electricity a day. Before the U.S.-led invasion, Baghdad residents received 16-24 hours of electricity daily. Without electricity, water cannot be pumped to homes and the average daily summer temperture is well over 100 degrees. The only area where electricity is available 24 hours a day as well as plentiful water supplies is the American occupied Green Zone ~ with its fully functioning living quarters, swimming pools, restaurants and health spas....

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IRAQ: Between the Two Rivers, Lack of Water Kills

Ali al-Fadhily*

The collapse of Iraq's infrastructure has created a worsening water crisis that is killing untold numbers of Iraqis. Iraq, with its famous Tigris and Euphrates rivers that run the length of the country, is now unable to provide drinking water to most of its people. "The two rivers are still there, great as they always were, and flowing all through the year," chief engineer Ahmad Salman of the Baghdad Water Authority told IPS. "Yet Iraqis are thirsty, and we are ashamed of being engineers in the service. We have simply failed to provide our people with half of the drinking water they need." Much of the country is suffering severe lack of water, and the small quantities supplied are not good for human use. "I analysed the water supplied by the water authority, and the result was shocking," Dr Ibrahim Ali, a laboratory owner in Baghdad told IPS. "It is definitely not good for human consumption, and every time we analyse it we find something new that might, in time, cause death." ...

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