By Peter Sachs
Q: With all the action in Israel, I haven't heard much about Iraq lately. What's happening over there I should care about? -Anonymous
A: There's a whole heckuvalot going on, so here's a brief recap.
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, came to D.C. this week and pleaded for more troops and more money from the U.S.. Thirty-six American soldiers and at least 1,129 Iraqis have been killed since July 1, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualties Web site, which tracks deaths reported in the media.
Ok, so that's depressing. But then there's this, which will cheer up at least some of you:
In Great Britain, a court has allowed several families of soldiers killed in Iraq to challenge the legality of Britain's role there in the first place. The families have argued that Great Britain must conduct an independent investigation to ensure that the invasion of Iraq was legitimate.
And back here, a new national poll on Americans' attitudes about the war in Iraq had this wacky figure: Half of those surveyed believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded in March 2003. That's a big increase from last year, when 36 percent thought that was the case. What gives?
One possibility: The government released a report detailing the discovery of many pre-Gulf War bombs that could have had chemical weapons in them. But those weapons are now almost 20 years old, and military sources told The Washington Post that the Iraqi army could not have used them even if it had wanted to because they had deteriorated so much. So, yeah, there were WMDs, just not the kind you could do any damage with. Does that make them nondestructive weapons of mass destruction?
Q: What's the deal with all the power outages I've been hearing about the last few days? And why couldn't I get on MySpace? -Laura, California
A: There've been a bunch of lame power outages (really, which ones aren't lame?) in the last week. A big chunk of Queens, New York, lost power for nine days, which is pretty ridiculous. Of course, there was the heart-wrenching MySpace outage for 12 hours last weekend, which prevented me from downloading some random indie music I had my heart set on and forced me to go to bed three hours early cuz I didn't have anything better to do.
But wait a sec. Those outages I mentioned all had something in common: heat. Los Angeles, where MySpace is, had a few "rolling blackouts" because it was so hot and everyone was using their air conditioners so there just wasn't enough juice to go around.
Sounds a lot like 2000, when a lot of Cali was plunged into hour-long darkness, no? Of course, we learned later that was mostly due to sketchy manipulation of the energy market by companies like Enron.
But this time might be different: Cities across California have been busting hotness records left and right, especially for consecutive days above 100 degrees. That's a problem for you and your electricity because power lines give off heat, but when the air already is so hot, it's hard for those lines to stay cool, so they can't carry as much electricity. Add in all those air conditioners, and things can get overloaded
That's what happened in SoCal (and why you couldn't get your MySpace fix on Sunday night) and it's what happened in Queens.