{"id":7596,"date":"2006-06-05T12:33:17","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T16:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7596"},"modified":"2006-06-05T12:33:17","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T16:33:17","slug":"the-lights-were-on-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-lights-were-on-but\/","title":{"rendered":"The lights were on, but&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>House [tag]Speaker[\/tag] [tag]Dennis Hastert[\/tag], at the request of the president, made a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/nationworld\/chi-0606030098jun03,1,2244281.story?track=rss\">surprise visit<\/a> to [tag]Baghdad[\/tag] over the weekend. Arriving at 4 am, Hastert said he was impressed with the number of lights he saw.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The speaker and his party saw it as a sign of progress, of how much power had been restored in a city known for frequent blackouts, according to Hastert&#8217;s spokesman, Ron Bonjean, who accompanied the speaker.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was one of our first impressions, so many [tag]lights[\/tag] shining brightly,&#8221; Bonjean said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, the easy response is that some [tag]electricity[\/tag] in Baghdad is hardly indicative of &#8220;progress&#8221; in Iraq. Indeed, considering that Hastert&#8217;s visit coincided with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/06\/02\/world\/middleeast\/02iraq.html?ex=1306900800&#038;en=07f66235751d300f&#038;ei=5090&#038;partner=rssuserland&#038;emc=rss\">lashing out<\/a> at American forces in Iraq, it&#8217;s probably best if the House Speaker doesn&#8217;t dwell too much on light bulbs.<\/p>\n<p>That said, the Center for American Progress <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogressaction.org\/site\/apps\/nl\/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&#038;b=917053\">noted<\/a> a Brookings Institution <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracyinaction.org\/dia\/track.jsp?key=132892008&#038;url_num=20&#038;url=http:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/fp\/saban\/iraq\/index.pdf\">Iraq Index<\/a> (.pdf), published the day before Hastert landed, that highlighted a different conclusion.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In Apr. 2006, residents in Baghdad received an average of four hours of electricity per day, compared to pre-war levels of 16-24 hours per day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Maybe Hastert caught Baghdad on a good day?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>House [tag]Speaker[\/tag] [tag]Dennis Hastert[\/tag], at the request of the president, made a surprise visit to [tag]Baghdad[\/tag] over the weekend. Arriving at 4 am, Hastert said he was impressed with the number of lights he saw. The speaker and his party saw it as a sign of progress, of how much power had been restored in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}