Va jouer avec ce grain de sable

Va jouer avec ce grain de sable

Celle-là, oui, on l’avait ratée, occupés que nous étions à jouer avec cette poussière (référence, nous l'avouons, à Henry de Montherlant: «Va jouer avec cette poussière»)… Car avec des grains de sable, le jeu est plus drôle.

Nous remontons donc au 31 mars 2010 et au New York Times pour apprendre que, parmi les divers matériaux, logistiques, ravitaillements, systèmes, etc., que les USA envoyèrent en Irak pour faire cette guerre fameuse que l’on sait, il y eut du sable. Quel commentaire voudriez-vous ajouter devant cette décision si évidente? 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 généraux-ingénieurs pour nous faire comprendre, à nous bourrins aux cerveaux encombrés de poussière, la nécessité de la chose.

Ainsi Stephen Farrell, du NYT, écrit-il…

«On 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.

»Yet there it is.

»This 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.

»However, 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.

»“When 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.’”

»“And 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.”

»It’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.”

»That 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.

»But sand?

»General 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.”

»His 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…

Etc., etc… Quoique nous sommes restés sur notre faim, ou sur notre fin cela dépend, pour ceci: ont-ils aussi envoyé en Irak des tempêtes de sable made in USA?

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