Maybe I'm the only who sees the little irony.   A couple of F-18s take off from an aircraft carrier named Bush (41 that is) and hit targets in Iraq on President Obama's orders.   Wonder how many of us saw that one coming?   I didn't.   At the same time, I did fear that we may have to go back if we withdrew too quickly for purely political reasons.

Today, we learned that US planes hit militants:

"Almost four years after combat operations ended in Iraq, a pair of F/A-18s bombed Islamic State artillery outside of Irbil in northern Iraq on Friday, according to the Pentagon. Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the jets dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on their targets.  

The aircraft were flying off the aircraft carrier the George H.W. Bush, with a full complement of ordnance."

My question now is what's next?

First, keep bombing and hit them for several days.  We have to cripple this army of terrorists committing atrocities every where they go.

Second, I hope that the administration has a plan to  take back the Mosul Dam.  

It would be catastrophic if the terrorists use the dam as another weapon of terror.   Today's Washington Post describes what would happen:

"The Mosul Dam is Iraq’s largest dam and with its shoddy construction could, if destabilized, affect the lives of Iraqis as far south as Baghdad.   Located on Mosul Lake the facility provides electricity and irrigation to surrounding areas. 

“If the dam fails, scientists say, Mosul could be completely flooded within hours and a 15-foot wall of water could crash into Baghdad,” Keith Johnson wrote in a Foreign Policy article from earlier this summer.  

A 2011 article from the International Water Power and Dam Construction magazine indicated that if the Mosul Dam was destroyed the ensuing destruction could result in half a million deaths.   

In July the Islamic State took the Nuaimiyah Dam in Western Iraq, and now with the seizure of the Mosul Dam, its control of critical infrastructure presents a huge challenge for the the Iraqi government. 

In a 2007 letter to Iraqi Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki from then commanding General of the U.S. Army David Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, the two Americans warned that the structure, built in the 1980s, had been erected on an unstable foundation of soil and was “at great risk of failure.” 

Johnson described Iraq’s dams as the country’s “soft underbelly in the fight against ISIS. ”   Iraqi forces remain in control of Haditha Dam. That structure, a sprawling hydro-electric facility located to the south west of Baghdad in Al-Anbar province, was a key focus of coalition efforts during the Iraq war.

For most of the U.S. occupation of the country a large contingent of Marines were physically garrisoned within the structure."

My guess is that this situation in Iraq is going to get very interesting over the next few weeks. I just hope that President Obama understands how serious this situation is.

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