'...Today, such famous sites as the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, the ziggurat at Ur, the temple precinct at Babylon, and a ninth-century spiral minaret at Samarra have been scarred by violence, while equally important ancient sites, particularly in the southern provinces, are being ravaged by looters who work day and night to fuel an international art market hungry for antiquities. Historic districts in urban areas have also suffered from vandalism, looting, and artillery fire. In response to such widespread damage and continuing threats to our collective cultural heritage and the significance of the sites at risk,
World Monument Fund has taken the unprecedented step of including
the entire country of Iraq on its
2006 list of 100 Most Endangered Sites.'
The 2003- Iraq War & Archaeology
The Smash of Civilizations
posted by y2karl
on Jul 8, 2005 -
11 comments
How to Get Out of Iraq by
Peter GalbraithMuch of what went wrong was avoidable. Focused on winning the political battle to start a war, the Bush administration failed to anticipate the postwar chaos in Iraq. Administration strategy seems to have been based on a hope that Iraq's bureaucrats and police would simply transfer their loyalty to the new authorities, and the country's administration would continue to function. All experience in Iraq suggested that the collapse of civil authority was the most likely outcome, but there was no credible planning for this contingency. In fact, the US effort to remake Iraq never recovered from its confused start when it failed to prevent the looting of Baghdad in the early days of the occupation.
posted by y2karl
on Apr 26, 2004 -
108 comments
The battle the US wants to provoke Make no mistake: this is not the "civil war" that Washington has been predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Rather, it is a war provoked by the US occupation authority and waged by its forces against the growing number of Shia who support Moqtada al-Sadr (by Naomi Klein in Baghdad).
posted by acrobat
on Apr 6, 2004 -
49 comments
Baghdad Bulletin “The Baghdad Bulletin is Iraq’s only English-language newsmagazine and one of the country’s only independent publications. The third issue (published Monday, July 7) is now being distributed across Iraq and in Jordan.” They have a short bit about how Chemical Ali may have
escaped Baghdad.
posted by raaka
on Jul 11, 2003 -
1 comment
Iraqi teen shares her diary of war In an Iraqi teenager's youthful hand, Amal wrote her war diary, committing to the pages of her orange journal the emotions of a family at Baghdad's ground zero. Amal's diary - often written by lamplight using the floor as a table - charts how some Iraqis' thinking has been transformed in a month.
posted by turbanhead
on May 3, 2003 -
6 comments
Policeman to the World? Andrew Buncombe in Nasiriyah reports on this "liberated" city "where looters run wild and death stalks the streets."
"While much of the Iraqi army and Fedayeen militia may have been destroyed or forced underground, the city has been given over to lawlessness and looting. Yesterday, the Saddam Hospital itself was pillaged by a gang of 20 armed looters, who made off with a haul of drugs. They even looted several of the hospital's ambulances.
What is clear is that Nasiriyah is neither safe nor secure. If this is an example of how the war will unfold in other cities throughout Iraq, it does not bode well.
posted by Dunvegan
on Apr 4, 2003 -
12 comments
"Shock and Awe" is the concept behind the Pentagon's planned, "Hiroshima like" attack on Baghdad. "Carpet bombing" was the concept's name in the old days, and was responsible for 125,000 civilian deaths in Dresden. Precision carpet bombing - condonable strategy?
posted by RichLyon
on Jan 27, 2003 -
100 comments
Deep, way deep inside Iraq This aired very recently on PBS but I just caught it online -- the link is the second of four video clips following U.K. journalist Sam Kiley reporting on perception and reality in Jordan and Iraq and contains the most horrific footage of Saddam supporters you're likely to ever see. Be warned, it's not pretty.
posted by subpixel
on Nov 25, 2002 -
28 comments
