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Author
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Topic: Possible prelude to the drying up of the Euphrates?
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Trafield
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posted
I don't think it is time for this yet, but very interesting developments!
Revelation 16:12
12The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates; and its water was dried up, so that the way would be prepared for the kings from the east.
EYE ON THE GULF
Is water Saddam's secret weapon?
Dictator could blow up dams near Baghdad to flood U.S. troops
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Posted: February 19, 2003
5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Saddam Hussein may be planning to use the earth's life-giving resource – water – as a tool of death in defending Iraq against a potential U.S. attack, blowing up key dams near Baghdad to send a rush of water southward, reports the Miami Herald.
Lt. Matthew K. Massey, a U.S. Marine Corps combat engineer, told the Herald he almost laughs when he hears talk about a "desert war" with Iraq. "Maybe it will be more like a water war," he said.
Massey points out that for American ground troops to get to Baghdad from Kuwait, they will have to cross the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the muddy Mesopotamia region between them plus a vast network of irrigation canals and farm paddies that Iraqi troops can flood at will.
"If he lets loose with [the dams] he can really slow us down and create some problems," Lt. Cmdr. Pat Garin, executive officer of the Navy Seabees' 74th Mobile Construction Battalion, told the Herald.
According to the report, U.S. troops are well-prepared to overcome water obstacles.
They have brought nearly a mile's worth of erector set-like Mabey & Johnson bridge sections, several 210-foot Medium Girder Bridges and dozens of 60-foot Armored Vehicle Launched Bridges and floating bridge pontoons.
"We know we'll have a considerable number of gap crossings if we head north," Massey told the paper.
Military use of water is nothing new in the area. Going back 2,500 years, Emperor Cyrus of Persia diverted the Euphrates and sent troops across the dry riverbed to conquer Babylon. Water was also used by both sides in the war between Iraq and Iran in the '80s in what one Western diplomat at the time called "the War of the Pumps."
According to the Herald report, several Seabees and combat engineers interviewed in Kuwait as well as civilian analysts in the United States said that water obstacles will be one of the key concerns of American ground troops heading to Baghdad, 280 miles north of Kuwait.
Hussein could flood southern Iraq by destroying the Lak al Milh Dam southwest of Baghdad and two others on the Tigris and Euphrates, Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a recent report.
A Seabee officer said that parts of Mesopotamia are so muddy and wooded after the rainy season that his unit has considered switching from desert camouflage uniforms to the darker woodlands pattern to blend in better.
"… [W]ater obstacles can channelize us," Sgt. Michael Smith, 38, of New York City, a Marine combat engineer, told the Herald. He was referring to the military tactic of forcing the enemy to concentrate his forces in places suitable for an attack. "Even if bridges are up, we'll have to work carefully to make it across because if he's smart, those are going to be his kill zones."
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