Bombing, sanctions, looting and sabotage have kept Iraq in the dark. It will take at least $10bn and three years to restore the power supply.

[...]

"For a city that's not supposed to have power, there's lights all over the place. It's like Chicago," Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said earlier this month after a night-time Blackhawk helicopter tour over Baghdad. Unfortunately, Chicago it is not. Iraq's current total power output is 3,362 megawatts. That may not be far off the 4,000MW being produced just before the war but it falls a long way short of today's demand, estimated at between 7,000 and 20,000MW.

However, his appointment does highlight the very narrow experience of the Bush foreign policy team, strong on strategic matters, less well versed in other areas of diplomacy.

Mokhiber: Ari, last week, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that soldiers drafted to service in the military "added no value, no advantage, really to the United States armed services."

The Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation has called this an "egregious slur" and a "grave insult to the memory, sacrifice, and valor of those who lost their lives in Vietnam."

One Vietnam Vet, Thomas Bohan of Rochester, New York, said this: "As a draftee who spent a year of his life in Vietnam, I would like to suggest that perhaps my inferior service to our country wouldn't have been necessary if those proud, flag-waving patriots like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the cowards had come forward to enlist. I would like to see Secretary Rumsfeld repeat his speech in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Memorial Day." Does the President agree with Secretary Rumsfeld that soldiers drafted to service "added no value to the United States armed services"?