Good news: Truck bomb detonated near Iraq’s rickety dam
posted at 1:53 pm on December 17, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Yeah, that dam. The one ready to unleash a Biblical flood on Mosul and Baghdad and wipe out every last bit of momentum Petraeus has developed. Along with 500,000 people, incidentally.
I’m surprised it took them this long to come after it.
A truck packed with explosives blew up on Monday close to Iraq’s largest dam, partly destroying the main access bridge and killing a policeman, police said.
The blast caused no damage to the Mosul Dam itself, which U.S. Army engineers have previously warned is poorly constructed and in danger of imminent collapse.
An engineer at the dam, Abdul-Khalaq Dhanoon, said a section of the 250-metre long metal bridge, which is about 1 kilometre from the dam, had been destroyed in the explosion…
Jubouri said the bomber parked his truck near the bridge, telling police that it had broken down and that he need to fetch a tow truck. Shortly after he left the scene it detonated.
Maybe they weren’t targeting the dam? Seems like too much of a coincidence for them not to be, but if the goal was to take it down then why not barrel full speed at the bridge and try to get as close as you can to the structure before you’re taken out? This looks more like a shot across the bow, although the enemy isn’t in the habit of giving those so it can’t be that.
Speaking of disasters, read this interview with Basra’s new police chief about what the Brits and their “soft touch” approach in southern Iraq have left him with: “They left me militia, they left me gangsters, and they left me all the troubles in the world.” To date, he’s survived 20 assassination attempts. There was some dispute last month over whether Basra had quieted down or whether it was in fact decaying into an Islamist gangland. The answer appears to be both: Attacks on the British are down thanks to a brokered ceasefire by which the militias agreed to let them be if they withdrew from the city. That was the logical solution since they didn’t have enough troops to pacify the city anyway, and since they don’t have enough troops to restore order it’ll be equally logical for them to withdraw from the country entirely. Such is the propaganda victory for the Shiites that even Zawahiri is trying to leverage it as some sort of pan-Islamist triumph. Some on the left touted the “quiet” in Basra as evidence that following the Brits’ example and withdrawing from our own areas is the quickest way to “quieting” the rest of the country. How does that look today, especially with Sadr trying to consolidate his power anew?
Update: Patrick Lasswell puts a damper on my vision of Biblical catastrophe. He says he’s sorry to do it, but I don’t think he is.
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Wouldn’t it be better to empty the dam gradually now, rather than wait until it kills 500,000?
pedestrian on December 17, 2007 at 1:56 PM
If the dam breaks, they’ll just get Superman to turn time backwards, until the dam fixes itself.
Frozen Tex on December 17, 2007 at 2:03 PM
speaking of Iraq violence:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8TIU33G0
I’ve been one of the most cautious in all this “great news out of Iraq!” stuff, because that can turn very easily when the Democrats start making bold promises of surrender, and the enemy responds with desperate attacks to expedite things. And cautious because:
BUT, what I think is the most important takeaway here… is that the Democrats, who wanted Bush to take a “new course” (or whatever the catch phrase is this week). He did, and by all accounts it’s working (so far). Yet they still are running on “pull out”. No matter how many times they say “new course” “new direction”, etc. All they’ll accept (for purely political reasons) is withdrawal, because they interpret polls showing anti-war sentiment as “Americans want us to surrender”. I’ve ranted on these evil SOBs before, I don’t need to go off on that tangent.
I’m just saying, it’s pretty frustrating, and yet another example of how these Dems are nothing but pure evil. They refuse to acknowledge the successes. Pelosi was just out with her “Republicans like this war” and Bush won’t “change direction” crap again last week! They WANT us to lose because that’s a big boost for them in the elections. We’ve seen some of them slip and admit this, and in a way, Pelosi’s whole “Republicans like this war” was along the same lines… but in reality, it is they who LOVE this war, because it gives them an issue. I mean, it was the Dems who spent 13 years making the WMD case until they flipped to create a wedge issue before the 2004 elections and started calling Bush a liar. They still lost that year, but it wouldn’t even have been close if not for pulling that crap.
They themselves admit regularly that “this election is about Iraq”… So who “likes” this war, you POSs?
RightWinged on December 17, 2007 at 2:06 PM
Sounds to me like the driver didn’t want to be a suicide bomber. If he were going to drive full speed to the dam and blow it, he’d have to give his life doing so. Maybe that was the original plan and the bomber had 2nd thoughts at the end and decided to live to fight another day…
krabbas on December 17, 2007 at 2:10 PM
I was thinking the same thing. Usually they’ll blow themselves up with it. No martyrdom today?
amerpundit on December 17, 2007 at 2:12 PM
Just so we understand reality fairly clearly, explosives are not the problem, erosion is the problem. If we could all just put down our copies of “Force 10 from Navarone” and step back from the DVD player, we might not some differences between that fantasy and the one where an Old Testament God gets mean.
For all their limitations, earthen dams are much less susceptible to explosions because the brisance is more readily absorbed by the comparatively loose structure. Concrete, which is substantially harder and generally a better material for building dams, is more susceptible to the brisance of the high explosives available to the terrorists (or Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw).
Additionally, unlike Hoover Dam, the Mosul dam is comparatively low. While it contains quite a lot of acre-feet of water, the height of the water column is not very substantial. I’ve been to the outskirts of Mosul, and there isn’t a significant hill in sight. There is no place to stack water up convenient to the dam. Since the dam was intended to provide agricultural water, that isn’t a big deal as a design issue. From a failure standpoint, this means that there won’t be a 200′ column of water being pushed out at high speeds through a breach. Instead there will be a 30-40′ column of water that will exit with much less energy.
I’m sorry to put a damper on Allahpundit’s visions of biblical catastrophe. Maybe he should go watch “Force 10 from Navarone” and hit the pause button during the Barbara Bach parts a lot to feel better.
Patrick_Lasswell on December 17, 2007 at 2:12 PM
Brisance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisance
Patrick_Lasswell on December 17, 2007 at 2:14 PM
With a couple hundred foreign fighters left in Iraq, I guess they can’t spare any more for a suicide mission.
steveegg on December 17, 2007 at 2:15 PM
I’m with you. I’d need a lot more evidence they were targeting the dam than a bomb blast at a bridge one kilometer away, especially since it likely required making a wrong turn if they had actually been targeting it.
The write-up sound more like Reuters dream story denied and they are making up for it by reminding AQI of the targets that will make for a really good story.
Dusty on December 17, 2007 at 2:30 PM
Dude, AP, you’re really reaching on the pessimism when you cite the freakin’ Guardian.
Yeah, things are messy, but the Iraqi Army is in Basra now. The militias will have to step lightly around them, because attacking the IA is lose-lose for them: the IA outguns them and is more popular with citizens. Maybe things will get worse, maybe they’ll get better, maybe they’ll muddle along about like they are now. Depends on how competent/corrupt the IA are.
Interesting points Patrick_Lasswell, thanks for sharing.
TallDave on December 17, 2007 at 2:38 PM
I’d say build an Ark, but they’d have to have a Joo do it and we all know that’s not how they roll.
mjk on December 17, 2007 at 2:41 PM
Call me crazy, but even if you’re right, this still sounds like something that could wipe out a city.
revolutionismyname on December 17, 2007 at 2:42 PM
revolutionismyname,
If the dam was suddenly disappeared, that would be true, but we are dealing with flow rates. This isn’t going to come in a massive wave, this is going to come as a trickle, then a flood, then a trickle. How long that takes and how much of a flood is speculation.
I can say from my observation of Mosul that the geography will tend to damp rather than intensify any flood this dam failure produces. When Michael Totten and I were looking for a vantage point to take pictures of Mosul in March of this year, we had to settle for an old anti-aircraft mound because that was the highest point we could find near the city.
I uploaded a picture I took of Mosul, the light was crap that day so I had to tweak it a bit. To the right you can see another anti-aircraft mound, notice that this is the dominant terrain feature. http://www.moderaterisk.net/images/mosul is flat2.jpg
Patrick_Lasswell on December 17, 2007 at 2:57 PM
Better link: http://www.moderaterisk.net/images/mosul_is_flat2.jpg
Patrick_Lasswell on December 17, 2007 at 2:58 PM
From what I’ve heard, Mosul is situated higher than the dam so it really won’t flood, and Baghdad is too far away to be heavily impacted. At least that is what some engineers there are telling me.
bnelson44 on December 17, 2007 at 2:59 PM
Deploy the Army engineers that are working at Lake Lanier to Iraq. They have experience in draining lakes. Danger averted.
smitgx1 on December 17, 2007 at 3:12 PM
Mebbe he really did run out of gas.
TexasDan on December 17, 2007 at 3:35 PM
Hey RW, I was over reading AJ Strata last night and he’s got a post that connects the dots better than pretty much anyone else I’ve read so far. Well worth a read.
techno_barbarian on December 17, 2007 at 4:49 PM
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful Allahpundit!
Hey, I live in Portland! We have a lot of dams around here, as well as idiot black bloc anarchists and the lefties who enable them. Even though I consider the likelihood of dam failure as remote, I live 100′+ above the Willamette and Columbia.
Patrick_Lasswell on December 17, 2007 at 4:58 PM
The nice thing about being a terrorist is that you don’t actually have to blow up anything that is terribly important to achieve your goal. They instill fear and terror in people worrying about “what if they blow up the dam” without having to actually blow up the dam.
deepdiver on December 18, 2007 at 2:05 AM
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