Thursday - April 12, 2007

Category Image A Bomb in Haditha Dam


In August of 2005, a bomb went off inside Haditha Dam.

Security in the dam is about as tight as you can make a functioning dam. All the Iraqi workers were searched daily, with the use of dogs trained to find explosives, with biometric data, and about any other way you might imagine. Security was handled by a very well disciplined company of Azerbaijani soldiers. How did the bomb get inside the dam?

There were a few theories, I never learned, if indeed anyone learned, what the correct version was.


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One of the many working dogs that supported us in operations and at the dam.

The bomb was made from a fire extinguisher. There are bunches of them scattered about the dam. Like many run down factories in the US, they weren't well managed as to where they were or what condition they were in.

That much we knew, but how did it get to become a bomb, and how did it get in the dam?
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This is a picture of the Euphrates flowing over and under the Haditha Dam during a winter release of water from the lake.
April 24, 2007: Addendum. I realize that this caption might be misleading. This is not a picture of the dam, this is a crane trolley track just down river of the dam. the water is frothy because the gates are open and water is flowing from them, or the upper part of the dam. Water always flows through the bottom of the dam through the power turbines, but that water flows without the foam you see here.

One theory is that someone in the dam was an enemy spy. This is not at all far fetched, since we had arrested at least one person for being an enemy agent. The problem is that in theory, we should have still detected any explosive material coming into the controlled area.

The issue was critical because the dam's electricity output and because destruction of the dam would flood most of the Euphrates River cities and towns down river (and there are few towns not on the river).

I won't discuss all the different ways we considered that a bomb might have gotten into the dam. My point is only that no matter how well guarded a place, it is virtually impossible to stop all attacks on it.

In my civilian life I was a manufacturing engineer, and studied maintenance theory extensively. In maintenance, you must understand that you can't prevent things from breaking. The best you can do is to mitigate the effects when things do break. Sometimes you have spares, sometimes you have redundant systems, sometimes you redesign the equipment. The point is that you can't prevent what you can't control.

And so it is with bombers. You cannot prevent a bomber from penetrating even the most well defended area, such as the Iraqi Parlaiment cafeteria where a bomb killed eight people today. If the enemy wants to do it, eventually he will be able to do it. People will be blown up, lives disrupted.

Just like with maintenance theory, civil peace requires an integrated solution to the insurgent forces that want to disrupt civil authority.

In maintenance, if you just fix everything when it breaks and try to make things so that they never break, you will fail.

In society, you must have a culture that does not support violent disruptions. If you simply try to screen out bombs and dream that your efforts will prevent successful attacks, you will fail.

It would be a mistake to conclude from the attack on the Iraqi Parlaiment that security has systemically failed. There was a breach of security, of that there is no doubt. The question is, can security forces convince the public of Iraq that they can maintain control?

That's the question that remains to be answered. I suspect it will be years before we can know.

The other learning point is that so long as we allow the source of these bombers' resources to operate with impunity, we will face more and more attacks. We must stop these sources. We must make people afraid to support them. We must make the Iranians tremble at the thought of provoking us, just like they were four years ago. Four years of ignoring their actions against us has emboldened them.


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The Azerbaijan Army commander, Major E. and 1stLt Garaev who often acted as his interpreter are meeting with the USMC Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. Both are first rate men, thoroughly professional, with some of the most disciplined soldiers I've ever met.

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A view of the dam from the east bank of the river where we ran our rifle range.

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