December 27, 2016

"If the dam ruptured, it would likely cause a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, loosing a wave as high as a hundred feet that would roll down the Tigris..."

"... swallowing everything in its path for more than a hundred miles. Large parts of Mosul would be submerged in less than three hours. Along the riverbanks, towns and cities containing the heart of Iraq’s population would be flooded; in four days, a wave as high as sixteen feet would crash into Baghdad, a city of six million people. 'If there is a breach in the dam, there will be no warning,' Alwash said. 'It’s a nuclear bomb with an unpredictable fuse.'"

From "A Bigger Problem Than ISIS?/The Mosul Dam is failing. A breach would cause a colossal wave that could kill as many as a million and a half people," by Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker. The dam "sits on a foundation of soluble rock" and requires "hundreds of employees... to work around the clock, pumping a cement mixture into the earth below."

ADDED: "Today, a stone memorial on top of the dam commemorates nineteen Chinese nationals who died during its construction; the memorial, inscribed in English and Chinese but not in Arabic, does not give the cause of their deaths. Alwash, the Iraqi-American hydrological engineer, told me that, in Iraq, when laborers fell into wet cement during large infrastructure projects, it was common for the work to carry on. 'When you’re laying that much cement on a dam, you can’t stop,' Alwash said."

89 comments:

Michael K said...

That has been a risk since before the 2003 invasion.

Unknown said...

Ummmmmm...... if the dam ruptures and 4 days later a 16 foot high wave reaches Baghdad, isn't that enough time for people to, you know, move out of the way? Even Mosul should have plenty of warning.

Though I am skeptical: that much water suddenly let loose would certainly travel much faster than that, surely. It wouldn't take four whole days to reach Baghdad, I'm sure. Much sooner than that.

--Vance

David said...

Dexter Filkins may be the best reporter out there. He should be taken seriously.

Fernandinande said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
exhelodrvr1 said...

The water will not retain its initial energy for very long.

Fernandinande said...

They use the word "catastrophe" as if it were a bad thing.

Unknown said...
if the dam ruptures and 4 days later a 16 foot high wave reaches Baghdad, isn't that enough time for people to, you know, move out of the way?


Here it inadvertently says the wave would move at 19 to 22 MPH, which, without actually knowing anything, sounds a bit slow.

Fernandinande said...

Fernandinande said...
...19 to 22 MPH, which, without actually knowing anything, sounds a bit slow.


Similar to speeds of water flow from other collapsed dams.

campy said...

requires "hundreds of employees... to work around the clock, pumping a cement mixture into the earth below."

Lots of jobs for burly men; let's hope they budgeted for plenty of diversity monitors and sexual harassment counselors and such too.

DanTheMan said...

Should it fail, it will be the fault of Bush, and Trump. But not of anybody in between

Michael K said...

"The water will not retain its initial energy for very long."

Disagree.

The St Francis Dam collapse would be comparable.

At 11:57PM on March 12, 1928, the dam catastrophically failed, and the resulting flood took the lives of as many as 425 people.[2] The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is considered to be one of the worst American civil engineering disasters of the 20th century and remains the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The disaster marked the end of Mulholland's career.[3]

I visited the site years ago. The only thing that kept the death toll as low as it was is that the area below was sparsely populated then.

The 12 mph (19 km/h) flood entered the Santa Clarita valley. Approximately five miles downstream, near the Ventura-Los Angeles county line, a temporary construction camp the Edison Company had set up for its 150-man crew on the flats of the river bank was hit. In the confusion, Edison personnel had been unable to issue a warning and 84 workers perished.[43]

Shortly before 1:30 a.m., a Santa Clara River Valley telephone operator learned from the Pacific Long Distance Telephone Company that the dam had failed. She called a California Highway Patrol officer who lived nearby, then began ringing the homes of those in danger. The officer and a fellow officer criss-crossed the streets in the danger zone with their sirens sounding. Within an hour the streets were empty, but little could be done for those on ranches and dairies in lowlands to the west of town.[37]

The flood heavily damaged the towns of Fillmore, Bardsdale, and Santa Paula, before emptying both victims and debris into the Pacific Ocean 54 miles (87 km) downstream near Ventura at Montalvo around 5:30 a.m., at which point the wave was almost two miles (3 km) wide and still traveling at 6 mph (9.7 km/h). Bodies were recovered as far south as the Mexican border; many were never found.


That area now has a million people.

glenn said...

Sounds like a California public works project to me.

Mary Beth said...

The next day, Vice-President Joe Biden telephoned Masoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdish region, and urged him to retake the dam as quickly as possible.

Thankfully there was an American Democratic politician to tell them the obvious.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Michael K,
Initially if the dam were to burst, there would be a relatively high speed flow of water due to the potential energy of water that is contained behind the dam. The water will not keep that high velocity - it will slow down as it spreads out, and as the water pressure/potential energy behind that initial outburst has decreased.

That doesn't mean it won't be extremely destructive, just that it won't keep that initial speed.

Wince said...

Maybe just keep those goat herders away.

High Hopes?

Once there was a silly old ram
Thought he'd punch a hole in a dam

No one could make that ram, scram
He kept buttin' that dam

'Cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes
He had high apple pie, in the sky hopes

So any time your feelin' bad
'stead of feelin' sad
Just remember that ram
Oops there goes a billion kilowatt dam

Darrell said...

It would be a dirty, rotten, cryin' shame. . .

David said...

The only heartening aspect of this article is that there are clearly thousands of competent, dedicated and expert people trying to fashion a solution, or at least to mitigate the risk. That in its own right is quite remarkable. Many of these are Americans in and out of government.

Whether these people will ever (and ever could be a short time here) get a chance to implement their ideas is pretty questionable in that environment. Among all the other reasons this is so, consider this:

For local residents, the threat of imminent violence has outweighed the threat from the dam. In Wanke, a small farming community about three miles downstream of the dam, isis positions are visible from the riverbank. When I visited, I found Mohammed Nazir, a Kurdish farmer, irrigating his field. For years, he told me, Wanke was a mixed Arab-Kurdish community. But when isis fighters swept in, during the summer of 2014, many of his Arabic neighbors stepped forward to help the invaders. “They told us, ‘This is not a Kurdish town anymore,’ ” Nazir said. “It was humiliating. They started ordering us around. I knew their children. I went to their weddings. They betrayed everything in life.”

Nazir and his family escaped to a nearby village, where they lived with relatives for a year and a half before isis was expelled from Wanke. When the family moved back, Nazir found that his Arab neighbors had fled with the retreating invaders. “They are not welcome back here,” he said.


rhhardin said...

It's renewable power.

madAsHell said...

requires "hundreds of employees... to work around the clock, pumping a cement mixture into the earth below."

Government jobs.

Unknown said...

Just imagine if the Aswan dam or the Hoover dam went.

Amazing what maintenance will do for you.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

The dam "sits on a foundation of soluble rock" and requires "hundreds of employees... to work around the clock, pumping a cement mixture into the earth below."

So, eventually its going to fail. Sounds like building that dam was just a horrible, horrible idea.

Michael K said...

"That doesn't mean it won't be extremely destructive, just that it won't keep that initial speed."

Your first comment mentioned "energy" not speed.

At 54 miles, it was still moving at 6 mph.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

More of Heinlein's "bad luck?"

Or is this more of a "Gods of the Copybook Headings" kind of situation?

It can be both, I guess. I wish the workers well--it's easy to overlook the role "routine maintenance" plays in not only keeping the trains running on time but also keeping us alive & able to lives as modern humans. Imagine what you take for granted, and shudder.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

More of Heinlein's "bad luck?"

Or is this more of a "Gods of the Copybook Headings" kind of situation?

It can be both, I guess. I wish the workers well--it's easy to overlook the role "routine maintenance" plays in not only keeping the trains running on time but also keeping us alive & able to lives as modern humans. Imagine what you take for granted, and shudder.

traditionalguy said...

ISIL will have a washed earth strategy to use. That's better than a losing Hitler's scorched earth one. Either way, it is war on his own people...like Obama did it to punish the USA as losers.

David said...

Look up Lake Missoula if you want to see how far this kind of thing can go. (Ice dam collapse)

Karen of Texas said...

Lake Lewisville dam north of Dallas, TX - it has the same potential to fail - in fact, was a very near thing in 2015. If they don't get needed repairs and it goes? The results would be an estimated 431,000 people displaced by floodwater, countless deaths, $21 billion in property damage and a downtown Dallas under 50 feet of water. Apparently interstate 35 would act as a fabulous sluiceway. I've told both my kids, who live in the danger zone, to hightail it west and east respectively if they hear anything about the dam being breached.

Houston also has dam problems. In fact, there are dam problems all over this country. The Army Corp of Engineers has a lot to do.

NumberingRavens said...

Water doesn't have to be moving especially fast to be both destructive and deadly.

Jason said...

EDWARD FOX, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD!

Paul said...

Uh, who built this 'wonderful' damn? I mean dam.

Who designed it to sit on such poor ground?

Oh, yes it used to be called the SADDAM DAM! See Saddam, like herpes and Obama, is the gift that keeps on giving. He ordered it and approved all the construction.

Many firms involved. They said not get rid of the weak foundation (soluble gypsum) but to 'speed' construction they just overlaid the ground with concrete (engineers blanket-grouted 25 m (82 ft) deep around the foundation and a curtain 150 m (490 ft) directly below the dam.) The gypsum is still there all around the grouted area. And it's crumbling.

Well hells bells.... the Iraqs have OIL MONEY... they can fix it themselves

DanTheMan said...

>> Well hells bells.... the Iraqs have OIL MONEY... they can fix it themselves

The author repeatedly refers to sanctions and US action as causing the lack of heavy equipment for maintenance.

Left unmentioned is the $2B Saddam spent on palaces during the time the sanctions were in place, nor the $1B in cash found by US troops during the invasion.

You can buy a lot of Caterpillar with $3 billion dollars.

SayAahh said...

Inshallah. Let it be the will of Allah

Hagar said...

Another interminable New Yorker article.

It is a tell when the writer uses "cement" which is just the Latin word for glue. "Cement" is Portland cement; the grey powdery stuff you mix with water and mineral aggregate in order to make Portland cement concrete or grout.

When I worked for the Corpse of the Eggineers first out of school in the early 1960's, the Chief Engineer of the District Civil Works Section referred to soils technology as "mumbo-jumbo sorcery" and absolutely refused to budget more than $50,000 for soils exploration for a major dam project on the Rio Grande above Albuquerque. This resulted in gadzillion dollar change orders to cope with "unforeseen" subsoil conditions encountered during construction.
That, and some other stories I heard about, made me determined to stay away from any dam project more than 10 ft. high for the rest of my career.

This was here in the good, old USofA. In Saddam Hussein's Iraq as in other dictatorships around the world, opposing El Presidente's wishes can be seriuously dangerous for your health and possibly also that of your nearest relatives; physical facts be damned - dammed, as the case may be.

Ann Althouse said...

I did a search on the word "cement" in the article. He does say "cement mixture." If the soluble rock is already there, maybe what is pumped in is what we call "cement."

Anyway, my search found this horrible info:

"Today, a stone memorial on top of the dam commemorates nineteen Chinese nationals who died during its construction; the memorial, inscribed in English and Chinese but not in Arabic, does not give the cause of their deaths. Alwash, the Iraqi-American hydrological engineer, told me that, in Iraq, when laborers fell into wet cement during large infrastructure projects, it was common for the work to carry on. “When you’re laying that much cement on a dam, you can’t stop,” Alwash said. In 1985, the reservoir filled up, and the structure—named the Saddam Dam—began holding back the Tigris."

Hagar said...

The word is grout, i.e., a mixture of cement, sand (and at most pea gravel) and water. Never "cement."

This is also part of the mythology of the Hoover Dam and many other large construction projects.
See "Christ in Concrete" by Pietro di Donato, etc.

rhhardin said...

It's like figs and fig wasps.

Hagar said...

And your street is paved with asphaltic concrete, where asphalt cement is used for the glue.

Curious George said...

"Since civilization dawned in the Middle East, five and a half thousand years ago, the region’s politics and economy have centered on its two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The rivers, which enter Iraq from the north and converge two hundred and fifty miles south of Baghdad, form an extraordinarily fertile valley in an otherwise dry part of the world. For centuries, populations flourished by tilling the rich alluvial soil left behind each spring by floodwaters receding from the plains between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. But the rivers also wreaked havoc, delivering too much water or not enough, and the settlements on their banks lurched between periods of drought and flood."

Wait, how can this be? 5,500 years of droughts and floods. All droughts and floods.. How could these have possibly happen without the widespread use of things run on fossil fuels? are now caused by somethi

HoodlumDoodlum said...

USBR Hoover Dam - Fatalities

Many people who visit Hoover Dam ask: 1) How many people died building the dam?; and 2) How many of those are buried in the concrete? The second question is the easiest to answer -- none! No one is buried in Hoover Dam.

The dam was built in interlocking blocks. Each block was five feet high. The smallest blocks were about 25 feet by 25 feet square, and the largest blocks were about 25 feet by 60 feet. Concrete was delivered to each block in buckets, eight cubic yards at a time. After each bucket was delivered, five or six men called "puddlers" would stamp and vibrate the concrete into place, packing it down to ensure there were no air pockets in it. Each time a bucket was emptied, the level of concrete would raise from two inches up to six inches, depending on the size of the block. With only a slight increase in the level at any one time, and the presence of several men watching the placement, it would have been virtually impossible for anyone to be buried in the concrete. So, there are no bodies buried in Hoover Dam.
---
The "official" number of fatalities involved in building Hoover Dam is 96. These were men who died at the dam site (classified as "industrial fatalities") from such causes as drowning, blasting, falling rocks or slides, falls from the canyon walls, being struck by heavy equipment, truck accidents, etc. Industrial fatalities do not include deaths from heat, pneumonia, heart trouble, etc.
...

An acquaintance of mine who worked in construction once said that only a very low-quality builder would ever knowingly leave a dead body in concrete since it would leave a void and likely weaken that section of the structure. I've taken claims of "buried in concrete w/knowledge of the people doing the building" with several grains of salt ever since, but its of course possible for someone to have gone in without anyone knowing about it at the time.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said...Anyway, my search found this horrible info:

Yeah, but is dying of an industrial accident any more horrible than feeling trapped in the life of a homemaker/housewife, or feeling like you aren't getting paid as much as a man with your job, or the daily horrors of subtle sexism at the office? I mean, sure, workplace deaths disproportionately happen to men and men are (sometimes wildly) overrepresented in the industrial sectors that account for the most workplace injuries and accidents, but what about sexism?? Let's not lose focus on the real problem.

SayAahh said...

Where is Jimmy Hoffa?

Hagar said...

The concrete used in mass concrete construction is also "zero slump," i.e. so dry you can walk on it, and you have to vibrate it in order to get it to flow. So, again, there are no bodies buried in Hoover Dam.

Original Mike said...

"Alwash, the Iraqi-American hydrological engineer, told me that, in Iraq, when laborers fell into wet cement during large infrastructure projects, it was common for the work to carry on. 'When you’re laying that much cement on a dam, you can’t stop,' Alwash said.""

If true, it's foolish. It would weaken the concrete.

Hunter said...

Wikipedia has the photo sequence of the Teton Dam failure mentioned in the article. It's terrifying.

Helping the Iraqis shore up this dam or replace it should be a priority of the next administration. Certainly if the US doesn't take this problem on, nobody else will. The Kurds who are in the path of this thing are reliable friends of the US, a rare commodity in Iraq or any Arab nation.

Fritz said...

When I was 12, the Baldwin Hills dam up above Culver City failed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIeNM8cm6J8

Virgil Hilts said...

The Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado almost failed in 1983. Its a pretty interesting story. http://www.hcn.org/40years/blog/the-summer-the-dam-almost-didnt
Had it failed, it would have been pretty spectacular, scouring the bottom few hundred feet of the Grand Canyon, overtopping Hoover Dam, and causing severe damage all along the lower Colorado River.

Unknown said...

It would take me long to process. Yet I think Fellini is the greatest filmmaker. Bergman a tough second.

Hagar said...

The Mosul Dam and the Kurds are located in No Man's land between Turkey and Iran.
If it fills and fails it is just tough shit.

Fernandinande said...

"Rayne water is bynding and stopping of nature, water is a very good seruaunt, but it is a cruell mayster".

ddh said...

Ivo Andric's "The Bridge on the Drina" and Ismail Kadare's "The Three-Arched Bridge" prominently feature episodes of entombing living people by the Ottomans during construction of the respective bridges. Perhaps that Ottoman attitude survives in Iraq, which was an Ottoman province up until a century ago.

Etienne said...

There is a death memorial at Hoover dam. It's a plaque mounted into the rock, for a dog that died after he was run over while taking a nap.

His name was "Niggy" which is why his name is not listed. It proved too politically incorrect.

J. Farmer said...

@Hunter:

"The Kurds who are in the path of this thing are reliable friends of the US, a rare commodity in Iraq or any Arab nation."

Countries don't have friends, they have interests. The Kurds are friendly to the US because they want to use US security military power to underwrite a de facto independent Kurdistan. The Kurds have also been carrying out a terror campaign against Turkey, a NATO ally, for over 30 years.

rhhardin said...

Since civilization dawned in the Middle East, five and a half thousand years ago, the region’s politics and economy have centered on its two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

That's why it's called the hippopotamus.

John Nowak said...

If someone fell into wet concrete, would they even sink? That stuff has got to be heavier than people-shaped bags of mostly water. Sure, you could drown in it, but fall in and vanish?

Paul said...

DanTheMan said...
"The author repeatedly refers to sanctions and US action as causing the lack of heavy equipment for maintenance. "

Sanctions? You mean they can't get around them like everyone else does? No imagination? They can't use anything but 'Caterpillar' equipment? You know, improvise.

I am sure one can improvise OR let the repair/construction be done by USA 'approved' people.

Guess they didn't have the money to buy off Hillary when they had the chance.

But they have the money honey, and we have the time.

eddie willers said...

His name was "Niggy" which is why his name is not listed. It proved too politically incorrect.

That intrigued me so I did a little research. The offended party was a professor from Madison:

"But in the late 1970s the plaque became controversial. A Wisconsin tourist complained to a Reclamation Bureau supervisor. The on-site supervisor ignored the complaint but the fellow, a professor, went home to Madison, Wisconsin and complained to his Congressional representatives."

I've read this blog long enough that this is no surprise.

Gahrie said...

The Kurds are the only people in the Middle East worth a shit besides the Israelis, so of course Farmer shits on them.

Michael K said...

The left wing PRK Kurds have also been carrying out a terror campaign against Turkey, a former NATO ally, for over 30 years.

FIFY.

Hunter said...

Michael Yon has written passionately and at length about Kurds. They are good people and probably the only people in Iraq who actually deserve what we were trying to do for them.

J. Farmer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Known Unknown said...

"Biblical proportions"

So triggered right now.

J. Farmer said...

@Gahrie:

"The Kurds are the only people in the Middle East worth a shit besides the Israelis, so of course Farmer shits on them."

If by "only people in the Middle East worth a shit," you mean willing to go along with stupid American intervention out of nationalist self-interest, then you are right.

@Michael K:

"The left wing PRK Kurds have also been carrying out a terror campaign against Turkey, a former NATO ally, for over 30 years.

FIFY"


Actually you fixed nothing and messed up more. First, since when is Turkey a "former" NATO ally? That'd be pretty big news. Second, the PKK is fighting for the same exact thing that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, an independent Kurdistan. Also, the PKK is not the only Kurdish group engaged in armed conflict with Turkey, though they are certainly the most prominent.

JAORE said...


It is a tell when the writer uses "cement" which is just the Latin word for glue. "Cement" is Portland cement; the grey powdery stuff you mix with water and mineral aggregate in order to make Portland cement concrete or grout."

A pet peeve of mine. Like referring to a cake as flour.

Here's the good news. The US has hundreds, if not thousands, of dams with NO routine inspection. Many are earthen dams without even concrete foundations. Smaller scale of course. But cold comfort to those immediately down stream.


J. Farmer said...

@Hunter:

"Michael Yon has written passionately and at length about Kurds. They are good people and probably the only people in Iraq who actually deserve what we were trying to do for them."

Nothing Yon wrote in the article from eight years ago changes anything I wrote. The last thing the US needs is to extend more foolish guarantees and obligations into the Middle East.

J. Farmer said...

@Hunter:

If Turkey decided to mount a large land invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan on the basis that it's a base of operation for terrorist attacks against the country, would that be justified?

Michael K said...

"First, since when is Turkey a "former" NATO ally? That'd be pretty big news."

It's not so new but I;m not surprised you missed it. It began with their refusal to allow the 4th ID to enter Iraq from the north. That gave us the civil war an eventually, with the help of Obama, ISIS.

Then Erdogan began to shift to the Islamist side and ended Turkey's alliance with Israel.

Now, he is threatening Europe with more "refugee" flows. NATO is dad and starting to smell.

I'm not surprised you missed it. I would not go to Turkey again and do worry a bit about some of the army officers we met.

J. Farmer said...

Nothing you wrote abrogates Turkey's membership in NATO, and it remains a NATO ally. As for the rest of your folklore, we'll leave that for another day.

Michael K said...

" As for the rest of your folklore, we'll leave that for another day."

Amusing. Do you not read ?

J. Farmer said...

p.s. I'd be thrilled if NATO were dead, since I don't believe it should exist anyway. But NATO membership does not obligate members to provide the US with launching attacks for its various military adventures. Turkey was rightly worried about what regime change in Iraq would look like (e.g. renewed agitation by Kurdish separatists and a refugee crishs on its borders). History has proven their fears correct and the cheerleaders for the war dead wrong. How exactly would military access across the Turkish border have prevented ethnic cleansing in central Baghdad?

Gahrie said...

Do you not read

Judging from his posts here, nothing since Das Kapital.

J. Farmer said...

@Gahrie:

Do me a favor...name a single leftwing political position I've advocated. You know nothing about my politics or my worldview.

David said...

97% of Iraqi geologists and engineers agreed with Saddam. Geologically it was a perfect spot for a bridge. You have to follow the consensus in science.

David said...

Michael K: "NATO is dad and starting to smell."

We don't come here to listen to your family hygiene issues, Michael.

mikeski said...

"Or is this more of a "Gods of the Copybook Headings" kind of situation?"

Right poet, wrong poem, perhaps. It's literally a "Sons of Martha" kind of situation.

Fabi said...

You certainly couldn't sink in zero-slump concrete. Falling into a pool filled with such would be like falling into wet sand.

Michael K said...

David, I'm going to have to type better.

Some blogs, like Chicago Boys where I hang out more, have instant preview and I still screw it up once in a while.

Mike said...

Re: Chinese nationals. That sounds like garbage to me (that they were buried in cement, not that they died). They said the same thing about the Hoover Dam. But burying a body in the cement creates a structural weakness.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Buried bodies provided proper motivation to the rest of the crew to get 'ER done. The areas with the bodies had margins of body engineering specs.

Analogous to Aqib Talib getting stupid penalties last year in order to motivate the rest of the guys, who as a team had enough talent to overcome the temporary referee setbacks, all the way to Super Bowl glory.

Also, Madison terrorist progs tried to assassinate maintanence workers at the Prairie du Sac dam, the sick sons of bitches.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"The bombers were Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt. They called themselves the "New Year's Gang", a name which was derived from a previous exploit from New Year's Eve 1969. Dwight and Karl, with Karl's girlfriend, Lynn Schultz (who drove the getaway car), stole a small plane from Morey Field in Middleton. Dwight and Karl dropped homemade explosives on the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, but the explosives failed to detonate. They successfully landed the plane at another airport and escaped. Before the Sterling Hall bombing, Karl committed several other acts of terrorism, including arson attacks on ROTC installation at the Red Gym and one meant for the state Selective Service headquarters which instead hit the UW Primate Research Center. Karl also attempted to plant explosives at the Prairie du Sac electric substation which supplied power to the ammunition plant, but was frightened off by the night watchman.[3]"

Filthy prog terrorist pissants.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing

J. Farmer said...

@Guildofcannonballs:

In the early 1980s, the US government trained a paramilitary force in Nicaragua in how to conduct terrorist operations against the government. Was it permissible for the Contras to commit terrorist acts against the Sandinista government? Why or why not?

Jon Ericson said...

SEEMED somehow relevant at the time...

Michael K said...

In the early 1980s, the US government trained a paramilitary force in Nicaragua in how to conduct terrorist operations against the government.

Didn't you deny being a left winger in another thread ?

Providing evidence made easy.

JAORE said...

"You certainly couldn't sink in zero-slump concrete. Falling into a pool filled with such would be like falling into wet sand."

True enough. But when the next 500 cu. yd of concrete is dumped on top of you it really doesn't matter.

JAORE said...

FWIW the Hoover Dam "buried in concrete" is a myth. It was built in small segments and the pours were by crane/buckets. (One of the gotta show videos in Civil Engineering school, along with Galloping Gertie.)

Dunno about the Iraqi practice.

ken in tx said...

Hippopotamus means 'River Horse'. How about Mesopotamia, which means 'between the rivers'. Maybe you were making a joke?

Rusty said...

Althouse @ 11:41
Portland cement. Which has the advantage of being able to cure while submerged. The advantage of concrete is that the longer it lasts the harder it gets.

J. Farmer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

"Didn't you deny being a left winger in another thread ?"

I wasn't aware that describing basic facts about a historical occurrence was "leftwing." Is there a fact in my quote you wish to dispute?

Guildofcannonballs said...

Permissable in the sense it happened, yes. Is that what you meant to ask, or were you attempting to elicit a discussion of how it was able to be permissable at the time and consequently actions taken to prevent future such notions permissable?

Guildofcannonballs said...

You see, none of us built these structures permitting permissiveness, good for us if we take advantage of opportunity, but we didn't do it alone. Cycles. Culture. Customs. Tea in China and spices in India. Eras and epochs.