WaPo A01:

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.

Well, let's look on the bright side! We can give the "reconstruction" work to Halliburton, and have Blackwater guard the ruins! Plus, imagine the photo ops!

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.

"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."

My goodness! Why is that? Three guesses: Read more…

Nice neighborhood. The Guardian:

Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.

Although fighting between Turkish security forces and PKK militants is nowhere near the scale of the 1980s and 90s - which accounted for the loss of more than 30,000 mostly Turkish Kurdish lives- at least 15 Turkish police officers have died in clashes. The PKK's sister party in Iran, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (Pejak), has stepped up activities against security targets in Kurdish regions. Yesterday, Kurdish media said eight Iranian troops were killed.

Well, fortunately one of Bush's many accomplishments is a strong central government in Iraq that can make sure that when the Kurds are federated, they stay federated. Oh, wait... Read more…

Just because it's fun:

I've been hearing something really interesting from a variety of sources the past few days, including Iranians opposed to the Tehran regime. That the Arabic language and Iranian press have both suggested that Iran might have provided intelligence useful to the locating of Zarqawi. The Iranian foreign ministry has praised his killing, according to wire reports, but denied supplying any such intelligence useful in locating him directly to the US:

 Read more…