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Subject: The effect weather has had in Iraq
UCSBrepublican     8/1/2007 11:59:02 PM
I'm a student at UCSB and have a paper due at 11-tomorrow morning. My topic is how the weather and climate in Iraq has affected the war. All I can find is its effect on the weapons we use, but there’s barely anything on the topic. If anyone has any information or websites especially concerning its effect on troops fighting or missions that have succeeded or failed do to weather and/or climate conditions please let me know!!!
 
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shek       8/2/2007 8:36:54 PM
A little late, but the biggest effect of the weather was to "disprove" American intentions in Iraq.  If we intended not to be occupiers, we would have fixed the electricity during the summer of 2003 so that Iraqis could have not suffered from the summer heat.  Instead, electricity became worse during the summer, and people living through 120 degree days don't have much patience.  It was a propaganda victory for the budding insurgency.  There's plenty of other causes, so don't overplay the weather here, but it was an information loss for the coalition, and in a countersinsurgency, that is critical.
 
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FJV       8/3/2007 1:33:45 PM
From what I've read the electricity story is a bit more complicated than that. I've read that Saddam used to favor Bagdad and the Sunni's when supplying electricity. The rest of the country basically got insufficient electric power. This meant that in the Saddam days Bagdad got most of the electricity to the detriment of the rest of the country. There was also a lot of negelected electrical infrastructure.

After the US took over, electric power was divided more evenly in Iraq. This meant a decrease in electricity for Bagdad and the Sunnis and a increase in electricity for the rest. The fact that most journalist at the time never got out of Bagdad at the time, they only reported the decrease in electric power. And I think it's quite reasonable to expect that it took quite some time servicing and expanding the neglected electric infrastructure to a level more suitable for Iraq as a whole.

This is of course from what I've read.
 
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shek       8/4/2007 6:45:33 AM
FJV,
 
You're correct that the CPA decided to reallocate the insufficient electricity, and so it exacerbated the impact of electricity production below pre-war levels during the summer of 2003 (we finally produced more electricity than pre-war levels for a small stretch in the summer of 2004). 
 
However, remember the question, which is the impact of the weather on the war; because we failed to manage expectations, there was a perception among Iraqis that we'd be able to fix everything in months just like Saddam had done post Desert Storm.  When we failed to do so like Saddam (and we were obviously more powerful than Saddam since we toppled his regime in weeks, so it was obviously within our capability to fix everything from the Iraqi perspective), it demonstrated that we didn't care to fix it. 
 
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FJV       8/4/2007 8:36:36 AM
In my opinion you can't fix everything in just a few months especially when it concerns neglect an infrastructure that has been neglected for a decade or more. Just building 1 additional gas or coal power plant could take months.

In my opinion the US has made a mistake in not communicating this situation to the Iraqi people, as a matter of fact the US govt. has made a mistake in not communicating this to the American people. In fact the whole communication an public relations side of this war has been a complete faillure.

I seriously don't understand why the Bush admin has not set aside a few 100 million $ for effective PR and communication. The Bush admin is so bad in PR that they even failed in taking the moral high ground from a bunch of child murdering terrorists who put throat cutting videos on the internet.

This diplomatic/PR/communications situation causes endless headaches in Iraq and could cause the US to fail and it shouldn't have been a problem. Effectively communicating to the public what you're trying to do and defending the actions you take should be standard for politicians.

PS
As for the question of the weather impacting the war, I'm afraid I'm too late. The student's deadline expired. I'm sure that anyone who has ever made a paper the night before it had to be turned in understands this.
 
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