Geography
The base, located about 100 miles (160 km) west of Baghdad, is divided by a wadi that runs through the area. It has a perimeter of more than 15 miles (24 km), and is the second largest USAF base in Iraq. It has 23 hardened shelters, two 3,990-metre (13,100 ft) paved runways and a 3,090-metre (10,100 ft) dirt runway. The runways, taxiways, tarmacs, hangars, and maintenance areas are on the southern half of the base, while living quarters, motor pools, and administrative areas are in the natural valley formed by the dry river bed to the north. A number of abandoned Iraqi aircraft are scattered throughout the base, in various states of disrepair, as well as hardened bunkers originally meant to house them.
The oasis located on the base is mistakenly known as "Abraham's Well", and is purported to have been a stopping place during the journey of Abraham recounted in the Book of Genesis.
Read more about this topic: Al Asad Airbase
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)