We cannot turn this dam back over to the Iraqis in it’s current condition. Better to just dynamite the damn thing and get it over with.
If we walk away, the Iraqis will fail to maintain the grouting process and the dam will fail, probably within five years. The Iraqis will steal the money, and we will get the blame.
If this dam is a politial symbol, all the more reason we should tear it down. Saddam liked to have the ability to flood things. He flooded a huge portion of Southern Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war in order to provide a buffer. He diverted water from another province in order to cause a forced migration of troublesome people. He was like a kid playing with mudpies in a stream. This dam looks like one more mudpie madcap construction project, and we would all be better off if it was gone.
The US Army Corps of Engineers, God love ‘em, never met a dam they didn’t like. This one may prove the exception to the rule.
Tearing it down, or rebuilding downstream with oil revenues, would make sense to me. But if a collapse would really cause 500,000 casualties, I assume the economic cost would be enormous. Of course if Pipes is right, we will bear the blame for a collapse.
Time to use the bully pulpit to get the word out that the dam has to be repaired or opened to relieve the pressure. Or both. Otherwise the American and European media will lead the way claiming our neglect caused the dam to fall or even worse, we blew it up. Anything to make us look bad. And the ignorant and uneducated masses of muslims around the world would believe whatever they were told.