Freedom isn't Free You Know

Riverbend's latest missive from Baghdad tells us that things have gone from bad to worse for the Iraqi people that we liberated from the world's last known Walter Matthau impersonator. Electricity is on even less, and naturally, in a nation awash with oil, gasoline is scarce and getting scarcer:

Oh don't get me wrong- the governmental people have gasoline (they have special gas stations where there aren't all these annoying people, rubbing their hands with cold and cursing the Americans to the skies)... The Americans have gasoline. The militias get gasoline. It's the people who don't have it. We can sometimes get black-market gasoline but the liter costs around 1250 Iraqi Dinars which is almost $1- compare this to the old price of around 5 cents. It costs almost 50,000 Iraqi Dinars to fill up the generator so that it works for a few hours and then the cost isn't so much the problem as just getting decent gasoline is. So we have to do without electricity most of the day.

She doesn't mention it, but I have it on good authority that while it is now prohibitive to drive, the Bush Administration has sent all sorts of ribbon-magnets to Iraq so at least they can decorate their cars with those bitchin' yellow "Support the Troops" symbols that only REAL patriots have.

That'll quiet things down.