Posted on 08/10/2014 11:51:39 AM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
If , as some reports suggest, Islamic State forces have seized Mosul Dam, they might have stumbled on a weapon exponentially more powerful than any U.S.-made armored vehicle or Soviet-era anti-aircraft gun.
The Mosul Dam is Iraq’s largest dam and with its shoddy construction could, if destabilized, affect the lives of Iraqis as far south as Baghdad.
Located on Mosul Lake the facility provides electricity and irrigation to surrounding areas.
“If the dam fails, scientists say, Mosul could be completely flooded within hours and a 15-foot wall of water could crash into Baghdad,” Keith Johnson wrote in a Foreign Policy article from earlier this summer.
A 2011 article from the International Water Power and Dam Construction magazine indicated that if the Mosul Dam was destroyed the ensuing destruction could result in half a million deaths. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Like what happened to the Marib dam in Yemen. Ancient, always repaired when breached until Islam came along.
The Islamites were too busy hacking off heads to worry about repairing a dam.
There is a dam with exactly the same problem sitting above St. George, Utah.
G.W. Bush took a gambled our soldiers lives and a trillion dollars that Iraqis would live rather together in freedom and prosperity than butcher each other to settle old scores. Bush’s biggest problem was he really believed that everyone has the same values we do. They don’t. It was noble and well intentioned, but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Amen to that.
I’d have Saddam back in a heartbeat, as much of a thug as he was.
Excellent idea:)
Me, too. “Some people are fit only to be ruled by despots.” That saying, from a long deceased British, applies particularly well to all Mudslimes. Yet, a somewhat friendly word for Bush. He, unlike the Mahdi, seemed able to learn from his mistakes. When he decided to deal with Quaddafi, instead of destroying another bloody Islamic ruler, he used the threat of force most effectively to flip him and make him our ally. The Mahdi, of course, on seeing that success and how helpful Quaddafi was, decided to overthrow him and murder him, and did so. That left the door open to the Madhi’s co-religionists, AQ and the MB. So, thanks primarily to the Mahdi, here we are now looking at the prospect of many more 9/11s.
The worst thing about the Bush administration is that with every passing day, my liberal/Democrat acquaintances who used to call George W. Bush a retarded jack@ss get more and more evidence to support their case.
9/11 is a good example of Saudi involvement in terrorism. I won’t say the Government was directly involved, but I wonder if the Saudi Government ever did enough to curb the money and Wahhabi extremism that supported terrorists. Thus, the echoes of terrorism are coming back to Saudi Arabia. I think this is a good time to tell the Saudis: “Ask not for whom the executioner’s blade falls, it falls for thee.”
In principle I agree with you about the First Gulf War but the thing I liked about that one is that it did allow us to pin down Iraq with constant over-flights and a declared no-fly rule for the Iraqi air force. We were in a great position with regard to Iraq (and the whole Middle East) after the First Iraq War and then we gambled and lost in the second war, with good intentions, as others have noted, but without much hope of success.
Yup.
I agree.
And incredibly naive.
Mahdi?
People in Austin (Mansfield Dam, Lake Travis) understand the threat intimately, too.
Russia, France, Germany, many others, all those holding Iraq debt who agreed to write it off after 2004 have immense investments there. Likely won’t want to see it all wash away.
IIRC they had some domestic rumblings 2-3 years ago. Seems quiet since then.
Naive and to a certain extent unfair. Unfair to ask American military personnel to expend their lives on “noble and well intentioned” when their duty is “protect and defend the United States”.
Also, there was a huge opportunity cost. Post-9/11, President Bush had a huge amount of political capital. Instead of using it to close the border (which would relate directly to future 9/11 attacks), he used it for “noble and well intentioned”.
We were there for Saudi Arabia.
It’s criminal after the 1973 Oil Embargo that we did not come up with an Energy Independence Program to wean ourselves off of Arab oil, we are slaves to it, and this is the result.
The Bush presidency is the gift that never stops giving. Conservatives will never gain any creditability until they totally repudiate just about everything W Bush did. I find it incredible that to this day there are some that still defend W's horribly failed policies.
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