20 Questions. Here is one of them.
15. What reconstruction is going on?
The rebuilding of Iraq is going frustratingly slow in the eyes of most Iraqis. Two months after the old regime fell, they still have no clean drinking water and uncollected rubbish is piled high in the city streets, rotting in the 40-plus-degree heat.
Coalition forces have engineers working at rebuilding schools and hospitals across the country, even in hot spots such as Fallujah, which has thus far been the centre of anti-American resistance. A loud civic cheer went up this week when front-end loaders began tackling the mountain of garbage on the streets of Baghdad.
Iraqis are experts in surviving such conditions. Safe drinking water has been scarce ever since United Nations sanctions restricted the importation of chlorine (it might be used to make chemical weapons). Imported, bottled mineral water remains the norm.
Merchants on every second street corner flog the use of their hand-held Thuraya satellite phones for several U.S. dollars a minute -- and after decades of being cut off from outside, Iraqis gleefully pay all they have to call relatives in Dubai, Jordan, Europe and North America, to say how happy they are the old regime is gone, and to complain about the new one.
Read it all here.
(Via Instapundit)
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