The Dusty Dog

Gas Turbines and War Profiteering?

Maybe I'm back in business here in the blogosphere; I dunno. I've never lost my interest in the politics of the day, but my attention has shifted dramatically from actively blogging to my photography. Ever since I fell into the bay with my old camera, and have been upgrading my equipment, taking my photography to the next level of technical ability and expertise, I've spent all of my time either taking pictures, post processing images, or just plain spending money for the equipment I need. For instance, you'd think that buying a tripod ballhead clamp, never mind the tripod itself, would be just finding what I like and buy it. But, it's not. I've been researching, asking questions, obsessing, till I finally did made my decision. I've been trying to go on the cheap, modify my existing ballhead, but doing so without throwing good money after bad. Unless you're familiar with the topic, you likely have no idea what I'm talking about. But, more about that later.

As I said, I'm back to blogging, and it's a particular article in Yahoo News that has caught my attention. Of course, it's about the Iraq debaucle. However, I now find that the word "debaucle" does not adequately define or describe the dubya policies and ventures in Iraq. Outright criminality is more like it. War crimes isn't saying too much. What these cockroaches have done is nothing short of criminal, and off the backs of well-meaning soldiers, who are likely just misinformed chumps doing their damnedest to be patriotic. They're heroically losing life and limb for nothing. That's a hard pill for them and their families to accept, but I do believe they are finally getting it. No one, not anyone, not even the most patriotic person wants to venture into that meat grinder called Iraq anymore. Nothing but an exercise in futility, for sure.

Case in point, and the reason for this resurgence in my blogging interests - the Yahoo news article, Bush Plan's $1B won't go far in Iraq. The article discusses how the $billions$ was never really enough, and the insurgency and sabatage are resulting in just throwing good money after bad.

"It is symbolic, at best, and is unlikely to have substantial impact in Iraq," Gordon Adams, a budget expert at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center, said of the Bush aid proposal.

But, to really capture what this whole fiasco was about, let's take a look at this next exerpt:

For electricity alone, Iraq needs $27 billion to fully rebuild the grid to meet growing power needs, Baghdad's Electricity Ministry estimates. In a new Iraq oversight report, the U.S.
Government Accountability Office (GAO) says Iraq's electricity demand averaged 8,210 megawatts last year, but peak generation reached only 4,317 megawatts. Baghdad residents got only six hours of power a day on average last summer.

The U.S. reconstruction effort added more than 2,000 megawatts of generating capacity to a system that produced 4,200 before the 2003 U.S. invasion. But the grid has been crippled by toppled transmission towers and other sabotage, insurgent attacks, looting, poor maintenance and poor planning.

The GAO reports that 16 of 35 gas turbines the Americans installed in Iraqi power plants — even though Iraq lacks an extensive natural gas network — are using crude oil or other low-quality fuels, producing as little as half the rated power and causing frequent shutdowns.

"Why did the United States purchase natural gas turbines to generate electricity when the necessary supply of natural gas was not assured in Iraq?" the auditors asked.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmmmm.......... It certainly begs the question of who exactly benefitted from the construction of these gas turbines. Was it a no-bid contract to one of dubya's dick's henchmen to line their pockets? My first reaction of course is OF COURSE! Kind of a no-brainer that should be followed to its source, that being the contract's beneficiaries. Maybe Greg Palast has some information about this apparent war profiteering venture. Maybe CorpWatch does. In my few minutes of google research on this issue, I came up with this lil' exerpt from a ThomasNet IndustrialNewsRoom article, dated March 21, 2006:

Some believe mistakes are more to blame than are extrinsic problems. For instance, Americans installed gas-turbine generators rather than having built or overhauled more of the oil-fuelled, steam-run plants. “Iraq doesn’t have pipelines to deliver natural gas from its oil fields, so plant operators resort to low-grade oil to run the gas-combustion engines, reducing power output by up to 50 percent and potentially damaging the machinery,” notes AP. Meanwhile, demand continues to rise as Iraqis invest in imported air conditioners, washers/driers, DVD players and other power-hungry appliances. To help fill the gap, households or neighborhood groups are buying diesel-run generators, stringing dangerous makeshift wiring around their homes.

If the GAO isn't investigating this, then for sure we have some corruption goin' on in DC. Like that's a big surprise......




Images:
Absolut Corruption from PinkDome
Expose Corruption from The India Tribune

Labels: bush, impeach, Iraq, neocons, politics, war

posted by Dusty Dog at 1/15/2007