This is more than pathetic!

American troops may not only be responsible for actually carrying out the Bush "surge" plan. As reported in an AP story today, "Soldiers found themselves explaining the new U.S. strategy to Iraqis, many of whom said they hadn't seen Bush's speech on television because they had no electricity."

Of course, they didn't miss much of interest because nowhere in Bush's 20 minute rambling did he even mention words like electricity, power, energy, or restore.Azzaman, an Iraqi newspaper, reported the same day as Bush's speech that Baghdad - a city of nearly 6 million people - suffered a "total outage (as) the result of sabotage in which power lines feeding Baghdad were knocked out."

The most current news update on the official Iraqi Ministry of Electricity website appears to confirm the story."It is not only Baghdad that is plunged into darkness," Azzaman added. "The national grid is so rickety that no province in the country now enjoys non-interrupted" power. Even under regular conditions, Baghdad only receives about 4 hours of electricity each day.Rep. Dennis Kucinich recently noted that "after the first Gulf War, Iraqis reestablished electricity within three months, despite sanctions. Four years into the US occupation there is no water, nor reliable electricity in Baghdad." Azzaman also pointed out that the nation had more electricity under Saddam than the current regime.

Electric power is a staple of modern life in both the Western world and in much of the Middle East. Iraq has had electricity since 1917. Regardless of any progress we have made or hope to achieve in Iraq, we cannot expect to win any Iraqi hearts and minds if they are constantly "plunged into darkness."

Simply killing more bad guys will have little effect if people continue to maintain a substantially lower quality of life than when we showed up.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS