Although the United States has spent $2.4 billion on Iraq’s water and sanitation sector since 2003, the United Nations “estimates that less than half of Iraqis get drinking water piped into their homes in rural areas. In the capital, people set their alarm clocks to wake them in the middle of the night so they can fill storage tanks when water pressure is under less strain.” Additionally, a billion liters of raw sewage is dumped into Baghdad’s waterways each day. The World Bank estimates that at least $14 billion is needed to refurbish Iraq’s water system.
Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/23/iraqis-desperate-for-water/
Monday, August 25, 2008
IRAQIS DESPERATE FOR WATER
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2 comments:
Thank you Bill for another great post that enforces my simple message;
"Afghanistan has doubled its opium production over the past two years and now accounts for 93 percent of the world's output, according to the annual UNODC survey. The southern province of Helmand alone has become the world's biggest source of illicit drugs. The amount of Afghan land used for opium has surpassed the total used for coca cultivation in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined. Afghan poppies, which start as flowers in farmers' fields and often wind up as heroin on U.S. streets, fuel a $3 billion a year industry in Afghanistan. The industry is filling the coffers of the Taliban, the group who gave safe haven to al Qaeda before and after 9/11, and it is destabilizing the Afghan government". (CNN) This investigative report was done using the figures from 2005, since then the figures from 2006 have been released and are much higher.
After many decades of fighting this same war on illegal drugs; it would be safer, faster and much cheaper to end this war by legalizing the drugs. The worst resistance would come from the drug cartels world-wide and the terrorist networks in the Middle-East. Without the illegal drug industry funding the terrorists, this global war on terror could end much sooner. At the same time for just a few more years (not decades) the United States will still have to continue clearing up the mess by the once illegal drugs; the same way as usual, with tax-payer funded drug rehabs, including heroine or methadone babies and their medical costs etc. Our society needs to get more faith in itself, because in the Middle-East where it is much easier to get heroin than it is to get clean drinking water, they are not a society of drug addicts.
This would also cut off the funded government corruption in the Middle East, Mexico and the United States. In time this will also solve many other problems in our economy especially the cost and availability of health care. The repercussions this would help to create for a few years (not decades) is one of the best examples of why our forefathers emphasized so strongly on the necessity of separation between the church and state. We should take one-third of the drug rehabs in the U.S. and turn them into hospice units for the “drug challenged”.
Hi Pat: Thanks again for your valuable input.
Bill
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