LIFE IN IRAQ….Matt Yglesias finds himself in a nostalgic mood today and wonders how electricity production is doing in Iraq these days. Via the Iraq Weekly Status Report, it turns out that the answer is: not so great.
I note also that although, as Matt says, telephone service is indeed much improved over prewar levels, a couple of pages after the electricity chart we learn that crude oil production is pretty sucky too. Saddam managed to pump out 2.5 million barrels per day before the war, and right now we’re only managing 1.6 million barrels per day. This compares to a goal of either 2.5 mbpd (from the chart) or 2.8-3.0 mbpd (from the footnotes to the chart). This might be either cause or effect of the declining electricity production, but the report doesn’t really go into that.
Sadly, school painting quotas don’t appear to be addressed at all.
