AT THE MOSUL DAM, Iraq - The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly 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 other U.S. officials.

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. “The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability,” in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

At the same time, a U.S. reconstruction project to help shore up the dam in northern Iraq has been marred by incompetence and mismanagement, according to Iraqi officials and a report by a U.S. oversight agency to be released Tuesday. The reconstruction project, worth at least $27 million, was not intended to be a permanent solution to the dam’s deficiencies.

“In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world,” the Army Corps concluded in September 2006, according to the report to be released Tuesday. “If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely.”

Full Story Here:
Iraq dam failure could kill 500,000

If the Iraqis don’t think it’s unsafe, let them wait and see what it looks like when a wall of water hits their cities, and the Army Corps of Engineers knows a little bit about earthen structures giving way in over-stressed situations, you know, like levies and such…

Further reading in the original piece reveals that much has been done to stop gap the failure of this engineering debacle, not OUR debacle to be sure, but you can bet that if it fails, it’s going to somehow be OUR fault…

The Iraqis don’t want to spend the money to build a new dam and America shouldn’t have to spend the money to do it for them, it’s politics, plain and simple, throw in the fear factor to enforce the opinion, an earthen monstrosity that could possibly give way and kills a half million people, could possibly give way, possibly, and if it doesn’t give way the word on the street was, ‘It could have’…

I sincerely hope it doesn’t give way, some of that half million will be Americans if it does, but just how far do WE go to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq, especially given the fact that we have a rapidly aging and deteriorating infrastructure of our own that needs to be rebuilt??

America 1st… Every time…

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