To the Editor:
I have been serving as a prosecutor with the U.S. Army for the past year in Iraq. I have been on leave from my job as a member of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission for the past 15 months.
Serving here and seeing how poor the people of Iraq are after 30 years of a dictatorship is truly life changing. You would not believe the electricity challenges they face here. In a country of over 25 million people, Iraq has only about 5,000 MW of electricity at any given time.
The transmission system is also incredibly weak. I believe that Iraq’s import capability from neighboring countries Syria and Iran is fewer than 300 MW. They are working hard now with us to re-build their transmission system and generating stations that Saddam Hussein neglected over the past 25 years and three wars. In addition, he treated electricity like a political commodity to be given to Sunnis and other political patrons who supported the regime.