Maybe that's the plan...breach the dam, wipe out Mosul and a lot of the Kurds, freeing us to take over the oil fields in the north. The wave would wash through the Sunni Triangle and take out a large part of that group (eliminates a good percentage of the "dead-enders") and then wipes the insurgents from Baghdad, all the while we are safe behind our wall in the green zone. After the deluge recedes, we take over for good.
Posted by the professor at October 30, 2007 09:41 AMas I said earlier....do ya think Al Qaeda might be making up some special car bombs with "dam" written on them? For that matter, Blackwater could be doing the same thing...both of them want the carnage to continue.
Posted by T2 at October 30, 2007 09:47 AMThe flooding won't hurt the below ground oil (the only thing we really care about.) And if the population is suddenly reduced, that means less schools, hospitals and power plants we would have to rebuild. It's a win-win. And then, we can blame al-Qaeda in Iraq/insurgents/Ba'athists/the PUK/the "bad guys" du jour, it's a win-win-win. With all this winning, it's time for me to go buy a lottery ticket.
Posted by the professor at October 30, 2007 09:53 AMEven better...we can blame the Iranians for a terrorist act which causes the dam failure. The ideas keep coming...maybe if I keep it up, I can get a job working for the administration.
Posted by the professor at October 30, 2007 10:05 AM"Why does Condi Rice still have a job?"
Good question. My guess is that because nobody could have imagined that Brown Sugar could have been so fucking incompetent...
Posted by John B. at October 30, 2007 10:22 AMWhy does Condi Rice still have a job?
She's the work wife of the guy who determines whether she gets to keep her job?
Posted by (: Tom :) at October 30, 2007 10:30 AMSounds like "A Modest Proposal", professor!
Condi draws a paycheck, but it's going too far to say she has a "job".
Posted by euzoius at October 30, 2007 11:02 AMpossibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
And remember, they are the US experts in flooding large cities, so they know whereof they speak.
Perhaps a sister-city relationship between Mosul and New Orleans is in order?
Posted by biggerbox at October 30, 2007 11:25 AMA full company of Blackwater little Dutchboy mercenaries are coming to the rescue, fingers at the ready!
Posted by TIKI AL at October 30, 2007 11:48 AMSo PC of you TIKI, you didn't even use the word 'dike'!
Posted by Seven of Six at October 30, 2007 12:03 PMYou asked for it, 7:
Send Rosey O'Donnel. She could plug that dyke with her hands tied behind her back!
...Happy now?
Posted by TIKI AL at October 30, 2007 12:24 PMWhy does Condi Rice still have a job?
Because Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table, along with hope.
Maybe we should call her Pandora Pelosi, since that's what she's done, closed the lid on hope while letting all of the worlds ill's free.
Posted by Duckman GR at October 30, 2007 10:03 PMI'm going to take a contrarian view here. I don't think this is the U.S.'s or the Bushies' fault. Oh, I'm sure there's the usual graft -- note the bit at the end about the Turkish company that stole over half-a-million. But it sounds to me like the dam design in the first place was certifiably insane. I mean, read this:
"...the earthen dam has one fundamental problem: It was built on top of gypsum, which dissolves when it comes into contact with water.
"Almost immediately after the dam was completed in the early 1980s, engineers began injecting the dam with grout, a liquefied mixture of cement and other additives. More than 50,000 tons of material have been pumped into the dam since then in a continual effort to prevent the structure, which can hold up to 3 trillion gallons of water, from collapsing."
Now, THAT's real insane. And I love this quote from the locals:
"You cannot find any other dam in the world like this," said Ayoub, a mustachioed man in a dark business suit who has worked at the dam since 1983 and has managed it since 1989.
LOL! That's an understatement for sure.
And then there's this nugget from Iraq's minister of water resources:
"Is the dam going to collapse tomorrow?" Rashid said. "I can't tell you that. Let us hope that we avoid a disaster and focus now on a solution."
Wow. Don't they sound a lot like the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans? I'm sure that same crack federal agency is on the job here as well, luckily despite New Orleans and despite the bad condition of a majority of the dams in the U.S., it has been a very long time since we had a major dam collapse.
And, there's always the chance that the locals are right. They've been running it for 20-odd years now, the article indicates, and it hasn't fallen yet, so they must be doing something right.
Stupid fact: I used to play a video game called Super Hornet, and you piloted an F/A-18 over Iraq. One of the last two missions in the video game was to nuke a dam, which I think could be this very one. It was a tough mission.
Posted by Brian Bell at November 1, 2007 08:03 AM