From Knight Ridder:
Talib Abu Younes put his lips to a glass of tap water recently and watched worms swimming in the bottom.Much of the US has been under a heat wave that doesn't approach 120 degrees -- any wonder people are angry?
Electricity flickers on and off for two hours in Muthana Naim's south Baghdad home then shuts off for four in boiling July heat that shoots above 120 degrees.
Fadhel Hussein boils buckets of sewage-contaminated water from the Tigris River to wash the family's clothes.
Electricity production is up to 16 hours a day in Iraqi homes according to U.S. military documents, but most Iraqis say they get eight hours of power a day on average, sometimes as many as 12. In poor areas such as New Baghdad, in the east of the capital, people go days without power, they said.Read the whole article on Yahoo and at the bottom give it as many stars as you think it deserves -- we're "investing" billions in Iraq, and the public should know what we're getting for it.
With about $2 billion already invested, Baghdad should be sparkling, said its mayor, Alaa Mahmoud al Timimi. He hasn't been consulted on American projects, besides signatures for completed developments, and has threatened to resign if he doesn't get a larger budget to solve his city's problems. The $85 million he was allocated can't keep up with the city of 6.5 million, he said.
