Times<\/em> pour apprendre que, parmi les divers mat\u00e9riaux, logistiques, ravitaillements, syst\u00e8mes, etc., que les USA envoy\u00e8rent en Irak pour faire cette guerre fameuse que l’on sait, il y eut du sable. Quel commentaire voudriez-vous ajouter devant cette d\u00e9cision si \u00e9vidente? Car qu’y a-t-il de plus naturel en Irak que le sable, et donc quoi de plus naturel que d’y envoyer du sable? Il s’y trouvera bien, non? A noter les imparables explications des g\u00e9n\u00e9raux-ing\u00e9nieurs pour nous faire comprendre, \u00e0 nous bourrins aux cerveaux encombr\u00e9s de poussi\u00e8re, la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 de la chose.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tAinsi Stephen Farrell, du NYT, \u00e9crit-il<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\u00abOn the very long and expensive list of materials that the American military had to ship to Iraq since 2003 many of which it is now shipping out again one might not have expected to find sand.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbYet there it is.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThis might seem strange for a country that is 10 parts sand to 1 part water, 1 part oil and 0.1 parts electricity. Counterintuitive. Absurd, even.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbHowever, American commanders overseeing the drawdown of forces and equipment currently under way from Iraq confirm that Iraqi sand was deemed inadequate for the blast walls that have become perhaps the defining visual feature of post-invasion Baghdad and other cities, stretching for mile upon mile around government ministries, airports, military bases and other important buildings. So, at no little cost, boatloads of more resilient desert had to be floated in from other countries namely the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. And not just for blast walls.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbWhen you start to ask why does it cost what it cost for this war, you are like: Hey, when we build a wall in the United States it only costs you about $1,500 dollars, why are you paying $3,500 or $5,000?’ said Maj. Gen. Phillip E. McGhee, director of resource management for the U.S. Third Army during an interview at Camp Arifjan last month. And so we were going, Well, that’s a great question.’<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbAnd then you look to see that based on the specs that we have for blast walls, it takes a particular grain and quality of sand. That sand is not in Iraq, so you have to bring the sand in. So that sand actually has to get on barges down in U.A.E., down in Qatar, has to come all the way up here, gets processed through there. You can either do one of two things, you can make the concrete, or you can just bring the sand up into Iraq.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIt’s the same story on bottled water for troops in Afghanistan, he pointed out, because of the lack of capacity to bottle water locally. The water has to be shipped into Pakistan via the port of Karachi and then spends 17 days on the road to Afghanistan. We pay 45 cents for a bottle of water in Iraq, he said. We pay $2.50 for that same bottle of water in Afghanistan.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThat water was also imported to Iraq the Land of the Two Rivers after the 2003 invasion is old news to anyone who has seen the crates of Kuwaiti and Saudi mineral water in Iraqi shops. Even gasoline had to be imported to the nation sitting atop some of the world’s biggest oil reserves, because of the perilous state of security, and Iraq’s oil industry in the years immediately following the war.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbBut sand?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbGeneral McGhee provides the engineering rationale: This isn’t a wall that you would just put on an interstate some place. These are blast walls, so they have to be reinforced steel. They are real specific about what type of concrete, and the strength of the concrete. And the sand that is up there did not meet the specs for those blast walls, so you have to find the sand elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbHis colleague Brig. Gen. John O’Connor, the Third Army’s director of logistics, said the problem went beyond vertical concrete slabs. The same goes for laying in airstrips, the same goes for laying down roads, he said. It has to meet certain standards<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tEtc., etc Quoique nous sommes rest\u00e9s sur notre faim, ou sur notre fin cela d\u00e9pend, pour ceci: ont-ils aussi envoy\u00e9 en Irak des temp\u00eates de sable made in USA<\/em>?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n
dedefensa.org<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Va jouer avec ce grain de sable Celle-l\u00e0, oui, on l’avait rat\u00e9e, occup\u00e9s que nous \u00e9tions \u00e0 jouer avec cette poussi\u00e8re (r\u00e9f\u00e9rence, nous l’avouons, \u00e0 Henry de Montherlant: \u00abVa jouer avec cette poussi\u00e8re\u00bb) Car avec des grains de sable, le jeu est plus dr\u00f4le. Nous remontons donc au 31 mars 2010 et au New York… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[857,9442],"class_list":["post-71744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-irak","tag-sable"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}