When I was in Istanbul for three weeks during 1980's, blackouts were common almost every single night. Electricity has long been flaky in that part of the world, even without terrorism or sabotage.

The lesson to be learned: put the power lines underground. Who knows, you might also dig up some smallpox, which would be a bonus prize.

They are indeed resistance fighters. Resisting common sense, freedom, prosperity, a better tomorrow...

This makes me kind of nauseated. This was the work of Al Qaeda foreign fighters. You know, the ones who wanted to keep the status quo of Baathist torture. For the Iraqi children and all that, and for Allah.

linden

Putting lines underground, is not simply dig a hole, put line in it and refill the hole (a thing who is already costly enough), you will have big
problems to solve with isolation, water infltration and more importantly heat: power lines generate a lot of it. It is not a problem
for aerial power lines but it is a major one
for underground ones. Solving all these problems
costs a lot

JFM, just to be contrarian, are those really problems in the Iraqi desert? I believe (somebody please fact-check my ass) that it's cooler underground the than it is on the surface, exposed to the sun. And there isn't enough water, either in the ground or in the air, for infiltration to be a factor.

That said, underground lines only offer an advantage to defending against hurricanes, not against explosives. Look at the troubles with the Columbian pipeline - enough explosives will reach the line, no matter how deep you bury it. And when it's underground, repairs become that much more difficult once it is breached.

Leave the lines hanging in the air...same with the saboteurs. Simple and real.

...just to be contrarian, are those really problems in the Iraqi desert?

Yes.

I believe that it's cooler underground the than it is on the surface, exposed to the sun.

True, but the worrisome heat comes from the wires, not the sun. It has to go somewhere. Whether in Iraq or Alaska, dirt is dirt; air is air.

And there isn't enough water, either in the ground or in the air, for infiltration to be a factor.

But what about isolation? H-T wires are bare. To isolate them, you just put them high in the air and hang them on a big insulator. Buried, you'd need an ungodly amount of dielectric to keep all your juice from going to ground. Then you'd have capacitance effects...yikes.

You can bury lower-voltage conductors without suffering terribly from these problems. But lower voltage means shorter distance and less power capacity. The whole point of H-T wires on towers is to transmit massive power over long distances. Put all the considerations together, and it's just not practicable to bury them.

Some of the best news to come from Iraq lately is, the U.S. Army is training an Iraqi civil defense force:

The militia will start off working with U.S. soldiers in joint patrols, but eventually will be responsible for defending key infrastructure and government buildings...

This is the only way it's going to work. The Iraqi people will have to defend their own society.

"American electrical engineers in Baghdad are not incompetent".

No they are not. Neither are the Iraqi electrical engineers, the ones that are just sitting around. Why?

Bleeding Heart Conservative is indeed confused: "This makes me kind of nauseated. This was the work of Al Qaeda foreign fighters. You know, the ones who wanted to keep the status quo of Baathist torture. For the Iraqi children and all that, and for Allah."

Who knows whether this was done by foreign fighters or not, and if so, whether they were Al Qaeda? And why would Al Qaeda, which denounced Ba'athists as 'secular apostates', want a Ba'athis 'status quo,' when clearly it's their own acendance they want? Start making sense, man!

To "American electrical engineers in Baghdad are not incompetent" someone calling himself only "jerry" responds:

No they are not. Neither are the Iraqi electrical engineers, the ones that are just sitting around. Why?

Yes, why is there an 60% unemployment rate in Iraq right now? Could it have something to do with Rumsfeld's decision (against the advice of Shinseki, who would know better, after all) to understaff the invasion and the occupation? This understaffing has left Iraq's infrastructure vulnerable to a relative handful of saboteurs and looters, who keep Iraq's infrastructure in disrepair, and therefore to keep the economy so hobbled that much of the population really can't do any serious work. (Decapitating all the state enterprises was pretty dumb, too.)

And why would such a smart man make a decision like that? After all, Rumsfeld was one of many subjects treated in the political science classic Groupthink, which I think anyone interested in politics and foreign affairs should read. Certainly you can't say it was because Rumsfeld was screening out advice he didn't like, and suffering from classic confirmatory bias. Surely he read the book that told him never to make such mistakes again. Surely, he didn't want to be a textbook case twice in his life for the same organizational disorder? Why, he has even bragged about how open-minded he has been about incoming information.

In short, if you believe he's a genius and learns his lessons and had the best information possible, you must also believe that Donald Rumsfeld has a reason why he wants Iraq's recovery from the war to be a long, staggeringly expensive process. My personal belief: it's because he wants to make sure that the American people really won't want to pay for it. A good way to keep the long-term costs high with high short-term costs (bonus here -- also to pay back friends and buy more for the future): keep employing Americans when Iraqis could do the job for a fraction of the cost. As even the handpicked Iraqi governing board has begun to complain.

Hello, Interestingly enough I was reading a book called Crusade about the first Gulf War when this one started. The Iraqi army did (it appears) the same things in Kuwait as they have been doing in Iraq. They trashed the place on a scale that was incomprehensible. So it seems like we should have seen this coming.