[lit-ideas] Why I take claims about "What we can do" with lots and lots of salt

From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 15:38:58 -0600

The warmongers among us paint rosey pictures of how super soldiers and
high-tech weapons will show those Mullahs who is the baddest on the
block. I never quite believe them. After all, the people in charge
include folks like former Proconsul in Iraq Paul Bremer who has
confessed in his book that "We didn't expect the insurgency." And
those of us who grew up in the Vietnam era know just how hard the
Pentagon whiz kids worked to figure out how many bodybags and how many
tons of bombs it would take to make the North Vietnamese cry "Uncle."
And, alas, the recent record of "sucess in Iraq" doesn't do much to
change my mind. Here is one example;

<b>Why things are going so well in Iraq [Sarcasm Intended]</b>

<a
href+"http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/02/good_electricity_news_from_ira.php";>Deltoid</a>
blogger Tim Lambert writes,

In May, last year I summarized the good news about Iraqi reconstruction:|

<blockquote>Due to lack of maintenance, electricity production fell
from 9000 MW in 1991 to 4400 MW before the war. Since then, there have
been many announcements of improved generating capacity and production
has fallen further to 3560 MW.</blockquote>

Since then, things haven't improved much, Brookings' Iraq index says
that electricity production in January 2006 was 3600 MW.

What's gone wrong? Let's look at an example. Arthur Chrenkoff's Good
news from Iraq, part 32 has this:

<blockquote>The army engineers will soon be adding a lot of
electricity to the Iraqi grid: "A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers repair
project at the Qudas electric power generating station 25 kilometers
north of Baghdad is 85 per cent complete. Engineers predict the work
will be finished within a month. Once operational, Qudas could
increase the nation's electric production ten per cent. The plant's
output capacity is 492 megawatts."</blockquote>

Well, it could, but it didn't. In an eye-opening article in IEEE
Spectrum Glenn Zorpette tells us what went wrong.

<blockquote>"The basic problem with Qud[a]s is, we have four LM6000s
out there that essentially don't have a fuel supply," says a U.S.
power-generation engineer who did a yearlong tour in Iraq. "We
installed a third of a billion dollars' worth of combustion turbines
that can't be fueled."

The LM6000 combustion turbines are a type known as aeroderivative.
They are basically Boeing 747 turbines mounted on heavy stands. They
work well on natural gas, but to run on diesel, they need high-quality
fuel and a fair amount of operational sophistication, two things in
short supply today in Iraq. "The first time I went to Quds and saw
those LM6000s, the first words out of my mouth were, 'What the hell
are those things doing here?'" says the generation specialist in
Iraq.</blockquote>

Not to worry, though, the cost of those big generators went straight
to someone's bottom line.

John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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[lit-ideas] Why I take claims about "What we can do" with lots and lots of salt

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