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Iraq's Mosul Dam Could Burst At Any Time (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: The Mosul Dam, located near the city of Mosul in Northern Iraq, was started by Saddam Hussein in 1981 as a way to bolster his regime and provide power to the surrounding area. It was completed in 1986 and has since generated 3,420 gigawatt/hours per year. Unfortunately, the dam was built on an unstable foundation of gypsum and thus needs constant repairs to plug leaks and maintain its structural integrity. Even more unfortunately, such repair efforts have stopped since the Islamic State seized control of Mosul. The dam could burst at any time, as a consequence. The flood could kill a million people and render a million more homeless. Radio Free Europe reports that Italy's Trevi Group has been contracted to repair and maintain the dam, but it seems like there's a lot to catch up with. (Also at The Guardian and Mother Jones.)
Shouldn't that be "3,420 gigawatt*hour per year", or "3,420 gigawatt*hour/yr"?
Shachar
Why haven't they blown it already?
This story smells bad.
Resisting the urge to shrug and just cynically say, "allahu akbar". One has to consider the ethnic differences that this might be a major genocide play i.e. shiite ISIS flushes shia territory or even nonconforming shiites.
Step 1: seed news sites with stories of dam fragility
Step 2: send in CIA to blow up dam
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit?
Come hell or high water, this should be dealt with pretty dam fast.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Is it bad that my first thought was "well, that will make a dent in Daesh's foothold"?
Civilians aside, it seems poetic that ISIS will literally be washed from the lands by their own stupidity.
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Who cares?
Good! That'll save tax dollars!
(The old way where 1 American dies for every 1,000 civillians, for every 100 terrorists was way too expensive in terms of American lives.)
This way, 100,000 dead terrorists, 1,000,000 dead civillians and 0 dead americans. Bonus: America's hands are clean.
Perhaps we should "lose" some dynamite and see if we can't hurry this process along?
The dam was built on what's effectively ... drywall? How do you fix something like that?
I couldn't have described the US political climate any better. Best. Metaphor. Ever.
Much like bioaccumulated radiation or global warming. The Mosul Dam will not be seen for the gigacasualty risk it poses until people see the wall of water bearing down on them.
A: A good start!
Ok... NOW I'm going to hell! lol
Seriously. If DAESH et al. are too retarded to stop fighting for long enough to fix this, they (and everyone else around them) deserves what they get. Sounds like a case of self-limiting stupidity to me, all around.
You mean to say,
"as a way to bolster the United States of America's regime"
or
"as a way to bolster Bush's regime"
Can we stop with the obvious propaganda machine here on /. ?
Cry me a river ... oh wait!
Must have balls of steel.
I wouldn't go into Iraq to repair a dam no matter how much you paid me.
The chances of getting captured by ISIS make it not worth it at all.
That must be wrong. Deaths from nuclear weapons and power plant accidents, combined, haven't killed that many people. Dams are clean energy producers and have to be way safer than that evil nuclear stuff. The estimates must be off by a few orders of magnitude. Nothing else makes sense.
What the hell is "gigawatt/hours"?
GJ/s^2, energy per times squared, hmmm, a sort of acceleration of energy through time.
What, did Saddam Hussein invent a magical energy source and was he perhaps killed for that?
Questions, questions.
Don't you mean US gov propaganda network????
Probably means someone has a plan to blow it up as a pretext.
Looks like Timothy just revealed his power level. I wondered where the rot set in during Gamergate and I guess Timothy at least must have jumped on the regressive left bandwagon some time ago.
What's next Timothy? Ad-blockers are problematic? Encryption supports rape culture? Video games caused ISIS? Do us all a favour and just get a job at the NSA or at Wired or whatever. We're tired of your iFascist crap.
Perhaps this will give the country the enema it so desperately needs...
since they aren't Christians... this will provide it. ;) And all the Christians have been expelled... :(
If its so dangerous just drain the darn thing. I don't care how neglected it is there has to be some way to open up the valves and drain the reservoir even if it involves shape charges or blow torches. If push came to shove simply disconnect the generators and open up their channels all the way, it would take a long time but the reservoir would eventually drain.
We can argue the what if's and should we have gone into Iraq all day long. But the reality is much more a factual standing and the fact that Obama left a wide void
for ISIS to infiltrate some of Northern Iraq was not only predicted, but the effects are being felt. No matter how you feel about this, when you liberate a Country you have a certain obligation to see that all your blood and money spent does some real good for the people. You don't just pull out like with a cheap whore and say you've paid your money and leave.
Errrr....because the CIA doesn't want to be responsible for a million dead Iraqis?
They are already demonstrably responsible for 500,000 due to the pointless war they helped cause. Not sure why they would suddenly care now.
ISIS controls Mosul, so even if the Iraqi government took the dam back, the area is still a literal war zone. So, who provides security? Does ISIS have an interest in the dam remaining intact? If Mosul is downriver, I'd certainly think so, but ISIS is nuts.
shrug and cynically say, "inshallah".
Allahu Akbar!
Last time this happened, a guy built an ark and got two of each animal in the world to go on it.
Sure the large loss of life will be tragic, but perhaps this will wake the local people up to the threat of the Islamic State and give them reason to finally arm up and wipe those fuckers out.
That's right Muslims, when that damn breaks, IS will now be responsible for MILLIONS of your own religious brethren dying.
So when are you going to stand up and wipe out the extremists? Why are you needing to wait for millions of your own people to die before you come to that startling realization?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Leave Iraq now Ameri... Omg halp! America halp! Halp!
Right up there with 'I was only following orders' and 'My dog ate it' in the annals of stupid opening statements.
Reminds me of the scene in Schindler's List where the guy from Taken is trying to convince Ghandi that the homicidal maniac that runs the concentration camp is really an okay guy. Sure, he uses non-combatants for target practice and profits from slavery, but if you could just spend a little time with them, you'd see they were just like you.
I was there in 2003 and they were saying that then. The workers work pretty hard at plugging the holes. Don't go swimming in the lake gives you a burning sensation. Looks good for taking a plunge when it is 110 outside, then oh shit my skin is burning.
will be the last resort of the U.S government, once they realize there's no other way to get the Iraqis and their government to do what the U.S wants. It will be even more horrible and vile than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Goddamn
I'm no fan of Obama, but I agree w/ him on this one. Also, I disagree w/ the Bush doctrine. It was okay to invade Iraq to verify the WMDs, which they then verified were not there, but beyond that, all that nation-building - toppling Saddam, holding elections, forcing Shias, Sunnis & Kurds to work together in a unity government, spending billions on reconstructing that country - none of that should have been done. When Bush stood on the USS Missouri w/ that 'Mission Accomplished' banner, he happened to be right. After that, he should have just pulled all US troops out (aside from those searching for the WMDs) and focused on fixing our own economy.
The result of the Iraqi constitution & elections was the declaration of a new Islamic state, from where Christians NOW started fleeing into SYRIA (this was well before ISIS was in the picture). It resulted in Iraq being handed over to Iran on a platter, thereby completing the Shia crescent of Teheran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut. And US buying into the Sunni ambitions of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar to topple Assad is what resulted in the current civil war.
Trump is right on this one. We outsource everything else - we should outsource this war to Putin.
Cruise missile redirect