The United States will no longer report the average number of hours people in Baghdad have electricity due to a State Department "technical change" according to a LA Times article.
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.
For our math impaired President, that is a 60 to 82% decrease depending which numbers are used. How does the average Iraqi evaluate the American occupation?
Crocker told CBS News this month that electricity was "more important to the average Iraqi than all 18 benchmarks rolled up into one."
The statistic got dropped on Ryan Crocker's shift. Why would the local ambassador participate in such a thing? His orders must have come from above, Rice, Cheney or Bush? Their propensity to hide bad news is well documented...
P.S. This just in from the BBC: 70% of Iraq's 26.5m population are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50% percent prior to the invasion. Only 20% have access to effective sanitation. Nearly 30% of children are malnourished, a sharp increase on the situation four years ago. Some 15% of Iraqis regularly cannot afford to eat. Nearly a third of the population of Iraq is in need of immediate emergency aid. That equates to 8 million people. Want to bet this doesn't make the Bush measure list either?
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.
For our math impaired President, that is a 60 to 82% decrease depending which numbers are used. How does the average Iraqi evaluate the American occupation?
Crocker told CBS News this month that electricity was "more important to the average Iraqi than all 18 benchmarks rolled up into one."
The statistic got dropped on Ryan Crocker's shift. Why would the local ambassador participate in such a thing? His orders must have come from above, Rice, Cheney or Bush? Their propensity to hide bad news is well documented...
P.S. This just in from the BBC: 70% of Iraq's 26.5m population are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50% percent prior to the invasion. Only 20% have access to effective sanitation. Nearly 30% of children are malnourished, a sharp increase on the situation four years ago. Some 15% of Iraqis regularly cannot afford to eat. Nearly a third of the population of Iraq is in need of immediate emergency aid. That equates to 8 million people. Want to bet this doesn't make the Bush measure list either?
