Baghdad Without Running Water for Over a Day

Doesn't sound like progress to me. And how does the surge help this problem, again? The Iraqi parliament might help but they are away for the month of August. They did not want to have to work in 100+ degree weather. They left the population of Baghdad to deal with terrible heat...without water:

Much of the Iraqi capital was without running water Thursday and had been for at least 24 hours, compounding the urban misery in a war zone and the blistering heat at the height of the Baghdad summer.

Residents and city officials said large sections in the west of the capital had been virtually dry for six days because the already strained electricity grid cannot provide sufficient power to run water purification and pumping stations.

Baghdad routinely suffers from periodic water outages, but this one is described by residents as one of the most extended and widespread in recent memory. The problem highlights the larger difficulties in a capital beset by violence, crumbling infrastructure, rampant crime and too little electricity to keep cool in the sweltering weather more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Meanwhile, the meat grinder goes on:

Four American soldiers were killed during combat in Baghdad, including three in a single roadside bombing, the U.S. military said Friday.

Three soldiers were killed and 11 wounded Thursday when a bomb exploded near their combat patrol in eastern Baghdad, the military said in a statement. Four of the wounded were treated and returned to duty, it said.

And certainly the families of these innocent slaughtered are not impressed with the surge:

A homicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives in the crowded outdoor market of a Shiite farming town north of Baghdad on Saturday, levelling houses and stores and killing more than 100 people, police officials said.