Saddam's sad folly

Submitted by Rebecca Moulds (United States), Nov 8, 2007 at 08:54

The frightening scenario of the Saddam Dam bursting and flooding parts of Iraq is not far-fetched; further reading on this proves that this is a very dangerous situation. In contrast, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, completed in 1970, has proven successful, although when living in Cairo, we used to talk about what would happen if that dam burst?

Most of us agreed (although we weren't certain) that we would have about two hours to get to higher ground, such as the Moqqatam Hills outside of Ma'adi. The two negative aspects of the Aswan High Dam are the displacement of about 90,000 fellaheen (peasants) at the time of building, and the fact that the stopping of the Nile River's annual flooding caused the precious silt, that once fertilized the Nile Delta, to lie at the bottom of Lake Nasser.

It seems that the Saddam Dam was a mistake from the start, and how long can this constant pumping of grout into the foundation last? Something has got to give, and the dam giving way seems the most likely to happen, although we can hope this isn't a definite prediction. Blaming the US for all the world's woes is very popular today but is not fair. It might take an engineering miracle to find the solution to this on-going problem; let's hope and pray that someone is working on it. This dam situation is yet another spanner in the works of the mess that is the Iraq war.

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