Writing in Forbes magazine, Caspar Weinberger comically asserts:

Power generation reached 4,518 megawatts of electricity in early October, compared with 300 megawatts, prewar.

If you’ve been here before (or over at Unqualified Offerings) you know that electricity production only reached this level for a day in October, and has been on a downhill slope since, with the most recent 7-day average at 3,647 megawatts. The 7-day average has not been over 4,000 since October 15.

But the biggest whopper here is the assertion that pre-war production was 300 megawatts. We don’t know where Weinberger gets his information, but clearly it has to involve some parallel universe. The pre-war level fluctuated from 3,300 to 4,400 (see here, here and this PowerPoint presentation.) 300 watts was the amount of electricity produced at the end of the war, major combat operations, whatever that was when the statue of Saddam fell with the happy crowd of INC flunkies looking on.

Was it a typo, a lie, or just sheer incompetence? To find out, we emailed the following to Caspar:

We were rather stunned by your “You read it here first” column in Forbes. While you argue that the media only reports negative news, we wonder whether this is a justification for you to report outdated good news or outright lies, as you did. You asserted:

“Power generation reached 4,518 megawatts of electricity in early October, compared with 300 megawatts, prewar.”

The first statement was correct, but no longer operative. The second has no basis in reality. As even the simplest search would have found out, although electricity production in Iraq peaked at 4,518 in early October, it has been much lower since, averaging well under 4,000 megawatts since. Furthermore, pre-war electricity production was no less than 3,300. We hope you will correct these errors.

Sincerely,

Sadly, No!

The waiting game begins…