Obama: Air strikes on Iraq dam 'to protect US interests'

[alp227]

Source: BBC

US air strikes in support of Iraqi forces' efforts to retake the country's largest dam are aimed at protecting US interests there, President Obama says.

The failure of Mosul dam may put US staff and facilities, including the US embassy in Baghdad, at risk, Barack Obama warned Congress in a letter.

It comes after the US sent bombers for the first time to help Kurdish forces expel Islamic State (IS) militants.

Kurdish officials now say they have near complete control of the dam.

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28831578

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. IOW: Contracts.

[cstanleytech]

2. Somewhat true but its also because there was fear I bet that ISIS would

destroy the dam causing massive damage downstream leading to even more disruption in the region which could have spread even further.

[candelista]

5. IS is not going to destroy the dam.

They want to control the electricity.

[warrant46]

3. The world's policeman has spoken

[Kelvin Mace]

4. Great, so now we will destroy the dam

with some "errant" munition or drone and kill another 100,000 people.

[candelista]

6. What "interests"?

ExxonMobil and Chevron are among the many oil and gas firms large and small drilling in Kurdistan under contracts that compensate the companies for their political risk-taking with unusually favorable terms. (Chevron said last week that it is pulling some expatriates out of Kurdistan; ExxonMobil declined to comment.) With those oil giants have come the usual contractors, the oilfield service companies, the accountants, the construction firms, the trucking firms, and, at the bottom of the economic chain, diverse entrepreneurs digging for a score.

Scroll the online roster of Erbil’s Chamber of Commerce for the askew poetry of a boom town’s small businesses: Dream Kitchen, Live Dream, Pure Gold, Events Gala, Emotion, and where I, personally, might consider a last meal if trapped in an ISIS onslaught, “Famous Cheeses Teak.”

"It’s not about oil." After you’ve written that on the blackboard five hundred times, watch Rachel Maddow’s documentary “Why We Did It” for a highly sophisticated yet pointed journalistic take on how the world oil economy has figured from the start as a silent partner in the Iraq fiasco.

Of course, it is President Obama’s duty to defend American lives and interests, in Erbil and elsewhere, oil or no. Rather than an evacuation of citizens, however, he has ordered a months-long aerial campaign to defend Kurdistan’s status quo, on the grounds, presumably, that it is essential to a unified Iraq capable of isolating ISIS. Yet the status quo in Kurdistan also includes oil production by international firms, as it might be candid to mention. In any event, the defense of Kurdistan that Obama has ordered should work, if the Kurdish peshmerga can be rallied and strengthened on the ground after an alarming retreat last week.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/oil-erbil

[bigdarryl]

7. I honesty don't think at this time most Americans especially(AFRICAN AMERICANS) don't

Give a rats ass about Iraq in light of whats going on in this country with cops killing black men and Ferguson