In July, the president hosted a press conference in which he complained that reporters neglected to cover positive news in Iraq. Apparently feeling a little sorry for himself, Bush said, “[I]ncreasing electricity in Baghdad is not the kind of thing that tends to get on the news.”
It wasn’t much of an argument. For one thing, Baghdad’s power supply is important, but in the midst of a violent tragedy, it shouldn’t be too tough a call for news editors to decide what’s really important. For another, as Amanda noted today, we aren’t increasing electricity in Baghdad.
In Sept. 2003, President Bush promised that he would help Iraqis “restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads, and medical clinics. This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore, to our own security.”
But three years later, electricity levels in Baghdad are at an all-time low. Residents of Baghdad are receiving just 2.4 hours of electricity [per day] this month, compared to an average of 16-24 hours of electricity before the U.S. invasion. The lowest level prior to this month was 3.9 hours/day.
According to our chart — using data compiled by The Brookings Institution — electricity levels have been steadily going down in the past two years (data for parts of 2003-2004 were unavailable) and are now at their lowest point since the U.S. invasion.
In addition to the obvious problem of Iraqis suffering without power, this is interesting for a couple of other reasons.
First, for some reason, Republicans, for some inexplicable reason, keep pointing to Baghdad’s electrical supply as some kind of good thing. Bush urged the media to cover it more in July; Tony Snow bragged about Iraq’s electricity-generating facilities in June; and House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office boasted of Baghdad’s shining lights as an example of progress in the war. This is the only “good news” these guys could come up with, and it’s not good news at all.
And second, it’s worth noting that the administration could have handled this issue competently, but chose the more traditional Bush way of doing things.
Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq — training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation — could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.
But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.
To recruit the people he wanted, [Jim] O’Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.
[Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA’s Washington office] said O’Beirne once pointed to a young man’s résumé and pronounced him “an ideal candidate.” His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.
The fact that Baghdad residents have less than two-and-a-half hours of electricity a day is only contributing to an already-tragic situation. But let’s not forget, it didn’t have to be this way.