In yet another example of the "success" of the surge, AP is reporting tha the taps in large parts of Baghdad have run dry:
Much of the Iraqi capital was without running water Thursday and had been for at least 24 hours, compounding the urban misery in a war zone and the blistering heat at the height of the Baghdad summer.
Residents and city officials said large sections in the west of the capital had been virtually dry for six days because the already strained electricity grid cannot provide sufficient power to run water purification and pumping stations.
In some areas of Baghdad, it's even worse than that. The article reports that one 52 year old retired Iraqi army officer who lives in northeast Baghdad says that his family has been without water for 2 weeks, except for 2 hours per night when there is a small quantity of filty, smelly water which has to be saved for the rest of the day. He says that two of his children have been ill with severe diarrhea, which physicians attribute to drinking the water, even after it's been boiled. He says that they'll have to continue drinking the water, because they don't have the money to buy bottled water.
The reason for the failure of the water supply is apparently insufficient electricity to operate the pumping and purification stations, and a spokesman for the Baghdad city government says that even if sufficient power is restored to operate them, it would take 24 hours to refill the mains, and even longer for it to be safe to drink.
In the meantime, a spokesman for the U.S. reconstruction program in Baghdad says not to worry:
Noah Miller, spokesman for the U.S. reconstruction program in Baghdad, said that water treatment plants were working "as far as we know."
"It could be a host of issues. ... And one of those may be leaky trunk lines. If there's not enough pressure to cancel out that leakage, that's when the water could fail to reach the household," Miller said.
Well, yeah, Mr. Miller, and we have some leaky water mains here in the U.S., too. And if any American city were existing in similar conditions, we might have civil unrest similar to what's taking place in Iraq.
The temperature in a waterless Baghdad? A high of 117 today, down from 120 yesterday. And even those residents of Baghdad who can afford air conditioning can't use it, because there isn't enough electricity to run their air conditioners.
NOTE: I thought about putting a "BREAKING" in the title, since this is certainly breaking news to me, but it obviously is nothing close to that to the suffering residents of Baghdad.