After my previous post on Ralph Peter's article on Iraq (free registration required), I couldn't help but notice how often he mentions a particular project, rebuilding a water-processing plant:
After inspecting a number of antiquated water-processing plants, where Gandara offered tough love and tools to Iraqi managers (he'll deliver expertise and spare parts, but won't do their work for them)...
...Gandara and his men are here to save the children's lives. The "minor" project is a nearly completed "compact sewage-treatment plant." Built from scratch for relative pennies, the plant will drain the sewage that routinely backs up into alleys and homes while further polluting a wretched water supply...
...But because of one small project (and there are hundreds such in Iraq), 10,000 of our fellow human beings won't have to live with sewage in their streets and shanties. That makes a real, human difference...
...What about those 10,000 dirt-poor Iraqis whose children will have a chance to escape disease? The old regime wouldn't spare them a few pipes and pumps. Isn't exposing a child to cholera while building palaces for yourself a human-rights abuse?
Nowhere, of course, does he mention one key reason why these water-processing plants are in such bad shape to begin with.
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