Worse than the Mongols

[Nursey]

Babylon wrecked by war (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1391042,00.html)

US-led forces leave a trail of destruction and contamination in architectural site of world importance

Troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon, according to a damning report released today by the British Museum.
John Curtis, keeper of the museum's Ancient Near East department and an authority on Iraq's many archaeological sites, found "substantial damage" on an investigative visit to Babylon last month.

The ancient city has been used by US and Polish forces as a military depot for the past two years, despite objections from archaeologists.

"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," says the report, which has been seen by the Guardian.

Among the damage found by Mr Curtis, who was invited to Babylon by Iraqi antiquities experts, were cracks and gaps where somebody had tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate.

He saw a 2,600-year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles, archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and trenches driven into ancient deposits.

Vast amounts of sand and earth, visibly mixed with archaeological fragments, were gouged from the site to fill thousands of sandbags and metal mesh baskets. When this practice was stopped, large quantities of sand and earth were brought in from elsewhere, contaminating the site for future generations of archaeologists.

Mr Curtis called for an international investigation by archaeologists chosen by the Iraqis to record all the damage done by the occupation forces.

Last night the US military defended its operations at the site, but said all earth-moving projects had been stopped and it was considering moving troops away to protect the ruins.

Babylon, a city renowned for its beauty and its splendour 1,000 years before Europe built anything comparable, was chosen as the site for a US military base in April 2003, just after the invasion of Iraq.

Military commanders set up their camp in the heart of one of the world's most important archaeological sites and surrounded the enclosed part of the ancient city. At least 2,000 troops were installed, daily passing iconic relics like the enormous basalt Lion of Babylon sculpture.

In September 2003 the base was passed to a Polish-led force, which held it until today's formal handover of the site to the Iraqi culture ministry.

In his report, Mr Curtis accepted that initially the US military presence helped protect the site from looters. But he described as "regrettable" the decision to set up a base in such an important spot.

He found that large areas of the site had been covered in gravel brought in from outside, compacted and sometimes chemically treated to provide helipads, car parks and accommodation and storage areas. "The status of future information about these areas will therefore be seriously compromised," he said.

Archaeologists were horrified by the confirmation of reports which have been filtering out of Iraq for months.

"Outrage is hardly the word, this is just dreadful," said Lord Redesdale, an archaeologist and head of the all-party parliamentary archaeological group. "These are world sites. Not only is what the American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it's actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world."

Tim Schadla Hall, reader in public archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, said: "In this case we see an international conflict in which the US has failed to take into account the requirements of the Hague convention ... to protect major archaeological sites - just another convention it seems happy to ignore."

Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan, a US military spokes man in Baghdad, said engineering works at the camp were discussed with the head of the Babylon museum. "An archaeologist examined every construction initiative for its impact on historical ruins."

He said plans were being considered to move some of the units in order "to better preserve the Babylon ruins."

"The significance of Babylon is not lost on the coalition," he added. "The site dates back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, but there are very few visible original remains to the untrained eye."

I wrote this two years ago when the first severe damage was inflicted by the U.S on the 'cultural heritage of the whole world...

Interesting poles here.
The land and the people that gave birth to our present civilisation being destroyed by weaponry at the most cutting edge of the human race's technological achievements...and now... the earliest and in my view most important artifacts in the human race's heritage... recording the very seeds of civilised thought* - the dawn of civilisation , thousands of intricately etched clay tablets ( most of which have still to be translated ) which have miraculously survived the ravages of thousands of years worth of history in one of the most tumultuous and intense hotbeds of human activity on the planet.....now, in the year 2003, being left open to the elements of chaos and destruction (as if it was worthless rubbish, when it is of inestimable value to the human race...far more than gold - or oil...to civilised thinkers anyway) resulting from the circumstances wreaked upon the region by an outside invading force of the number one superpower which has just carved out the role of number one most powerful agressor on the planet today, responsible for the single most deadly blow ever dealt to the UN , figureheaded by an illiterate sociopath who makes a living mockery of the worthiest traits in human nature...the record holding Texan executionist and retard killer...George W Bush...whose actions are undoing the greatest achievements of every civilised human that has ever contributed to the furtherance of the human race and dragging us all into a living nightmare world of complete chaos, lawlessness and destruction.

*documenting a most significant point in time, the dawn of human civilisation, which i believe is synonymous with the elevation from a primitive animalistic state of squalour and barbarism to a far more noble creature empowered with the unique ability to expand consciousnesses beyond what can be immediately perceived i.e basic material stimulus. An ability we appear to be relinquishing in our base impulse driven society.


That last bits a bit sketchy, but you get the jist.

[FagARoni]

Don't get worked up, Nursey. It was a bunch of crumbling old ruins anyway. You know 'war is hell' & all that.

Maybe American architect Frank Gehry can be assigned to provide the Iraqis something real nice, lak that art museum he did for the Spics in Bilbao?

[FagARoni]

http://cards.corporateecards.com/cards/598565439/large/3001020133124826.jpg

http://cards.corporateecards.com/cards/598565439/large/3001020133124826.jpg

[Nursey]

Don't get worked up, Nursey. It was a bunch of crumbling old ruins anyway.
That's sarcasm. Isn't it? I fucking hope so. But then again...it is you... :?

You know 'war is hell' & all that.
Well i expect you to say the same when the next 'Reichstag' manufactured terrorist event devastates one of your cities.

Maybe American architect Frank Gehry can be assigned to provide the Iraqis something real nice, lak that art museum he did for the Spics in Bilbao?
Yeah! And a huge adult entertainment complex called 'Babylon X' where 'King' can be watched screwing 'Ishtar' would spin a fucking buck or two!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v185/dstrictnursey/ugh.jpg

[Nursey]

Iraq's 'Year Zero'. Pol Pot visits Mesapotamia. (http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18168&hd=0&size=1&l=x)
Felicity Arbuthnot

November 25, 2005

The continuing destruction of Iraq's history - ancient and modern - of homes, lives and civil society under the watch of and at the hands of US and British troops - in defiance of a swathe of international law - is an uncanny and chilling mirror image of Pol Pot'sYear Zero.

In 1975 : 'Society was to be purified ... throughout Cambodia, deadly purges were conducted to eliminate remnants of the old society: the educated, the wealthy, the (religious elders) police, doctors, lawyers, teachers, former government offiicials, soldiers .... Education, health care... was halted, cities forcibly evacuated....The country sealed off from the outside world.' History, monuments, ancient and modern, world heritage sites, were erased from the earth. Newspapers, radio and television were banned.

Secret prisons were built, Moslems 'were forced to eat pork.' 'Up to twenty thousand people were tortured into giving false confessions in a schoolin Phnom Penh,converted into a jail ... elsewhere suspects were often shot before being questioned.'(1) Think Abu Ghraib (and don't forget Guantanamo) and all those other centres where Iraq's disappeared are incarcerated, now admitted - but not where. Think the shootings at road blocks, the 'cleansing' of Iraq's towns and cities. Add to Pol Pot's horrific regime only the the killing of nearly eighty journalists in thirty months,the bombing of two television stations - Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, whose map grid reference had been trustingly given to the Pentagon - so any light falling on the slaughter and destruction of a nation and it's heritage, becomes impossible - and the all is Iraq, writ with succint accuracy.

Iraq's society too is being 'purified', with precisely the same categories of humanity targetted by Pol Pot being killed in their hundreds: academics to doctors, scientists to soldiers. Former US Viceroy Paul Bremer called his purification 'de-Ba'athification' and sacked just about every strata of society needed to run a civilised one - in Iraq's Year Zero, as Cambodia, their real sin was their race and its heritage, ancient and modern.

The destruction, looting of the haunting wonders of the National Museum, Mosul Museum, the two million irreplaceable books, manuscripts reduced to ashes, records of the National Library, the University of Endowment with its unique collection of ancient Q'urans, the vandalisation of Babylon and Ur by the new Barbarians - US soldiers - and desecration of thousands of archeological sites - the very history of mankind - have been heart wrenchingly recorded. Not recorded is the equally illegal and ongoing, planned destruction of every vestige of Iraq's more modern history, on the orders of the Supreme Committee for de-Ba'athification - Pol Pot could'nt have bettered that tag.

In Basra, early casualties were the dead heroes of the US-driven Iran-Iraq war, whose great bronze figures lined part of the corniche, arm out, pointing toward Iran. They were controversial and subject of much debate in a nation invaded repeatedly, throughout its history, its people utterly weary of war. But they were Iraq's sons and died in defence of their country. They are no more.

The museum up the road, commemorating more of the dead of the eight year conflagration, of whom so many on both sides were lost it has been compared to World War 1, was also destroyed and with it, the only memory for so many: their identity cards, with details and photograph, hundred upon hundred, of the silent dead, living, staring from wall after wall. Real people, mostly so young:; the date they celebrated their birthdays, for all to see, occupation, skills learned over student years, engendered by youthful aspirations, never now to be met. The last vestiges of them has now vanished. Imagine if the Imperial War Museum in London, the Vietnam Memorial Wall, Arlington Cemetary, the Holocaust Museum, the Hiroshima Memorial were raised to the ground. Unthinkable - but Iraq's grief is, it seems, simply inconsequential. That these are 'grave breaches' under Additional Protocol 1 of the expanded Geneva Convention of 1977 and happened under watch of the British Army has not been addressed. That the British Army itself looted a vast statue of Iraq's President and took it back to their Somerset, south of England, base (2) - at British tax payers' expense - has also not been addressed and Protocol 1 also applies.

The British though, had been told their first duty was to head for the oil terminal and secure it (3). Statues and museums clearly paled against of the significance of Iraq's oil..

North in Baghdad early violations by the US army, included the statue toppling and squatting in Palaces, 'using national historic buildings' as a 'command centre' is also a violation. It is incumbant in the region, for each leader to leave behind him something more magnicent that his predecessor, the Palaces are both national assets - not American ones - and tomorrow's history. National buildings too are protected, not free board and lodging for illegal invaders. Reports too numerous to cite recorded US soldiers returning home with palace 'souvenirs' they thieved and also priceless artifacts, prosecutions have been minimal or missing.

Over fifteen hundred modern paintings and scuptures disappeared from the city's Museum of Fine Arts, where to visit was to gaze in awe at the wonderous imagination which created unique beauty. In June1993 an American missile killed the Museum's curator, Leila Al Attar in one of numerous illegal bombings. Now her legacy too, is no more. 'A cultural disaster', near unmentioned, was how UNESCO's Mounir Bouchenak described that cultural vandalism.(4) Thank goodness the troops thought to perfectly preserve the Oil Ministry.

Bit by bit, un-noticed, is the destruction of every statue, every landmark, which was the vibrant beauty, history's hallmarks, which enchanted Baghdadis and visitors, marked the passing of a personality, commemorated Gilgamesh, the Thousand and One Nights, probably the earliest great epic story; Sinbad the Sailor, Iraq's triumphs and tears.

Ironically,' international guidelines protecting cultural property against damage and theft,date back to the American Civil War.' That carnage 'led to the 1863 Lieber Code, protecting libraries, scientific collections and works of art' and was strengthened by the '1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property.' The Nuremburg Trials after World War 11, sentenced Nazi officials to death for destruction of cultural property.(5) This did not deter US soldiers from the first truly breath taking act of desecration.

Michel Aflaq was the Syrian born, French educated, Christian 'Father of Pan Arabism'. A towering intellect, with Salah al-Din al-Bitar, a Moslem - the two met whilst studying in Paris in the 1920's and 1930's - '... created the political movement which would come to dominate Syria and Iraq in the modern world.' Thinker, philosopher, student of Nietzsche, Gide, Tolstoy, French theorist Henri Bergson, with Bitar he had founded France's Arab Student Union. Finally devoting their energies to politics, culminating in the formation of the Arab Ba'ath Party with Jalil Said, in 1947 with '.... a secular focus ' with Islam's significance acknowledged, contributing to world wide emancipation, with a central tenet being that there were Arabs before there were Muslims - thus the ideal of the Arab state. For Aflaq, 'theorist of integrity ....... incorruptable'; a central tenet of the movement was representing : ' .. the Arab spirit ... Arab nation, emphasising culture rather than politics. (6) He survived imprisonment, high office and the region's turmoils, dying in Paris in 1989 and buried in Baghdad where his tomb, statue in his honour and dome, occupied a ten km square site. In September 2003 the US army 'levelled the all to earth', on orders of 'Viceroy' Bremer.(7) Think flattening the Lincoln Memorial and you'll be getting there.

Vandalising religious and historic monuments are also prohibited and illegal acts under the Hague Convention. Desecrating a grave is a criminal act of the lowest order, in any society.

Driving into central Baghdad from the west, in Nasr Square, Sa'doun Street, a small, resolute figure graced a plinth. He was Abdul Muhsin Al-Sa'doun. Born in Nasiriya in 1889, he became Minister of Justice, then in 1922, Minister of the Interior, then Prime Minister four times, a youthful, political shooting star. In his fourth term as Prime Minister, in 1929, he left the Parliamentary chamber, went into a side room and shot himself, rather than give in to British Colonial demands. He died of integrity, aged just forty years. His statue, made by an Italian sculpture in 1933, stands no more, razed shortly after Michel Aflaq's, and reportedly melted down. Reports differ as to who was responsible, but not disputed is that it happened under US Army's watch - even if not at their hands. Symbolism is stark: a man who died of integrity has been razed - along with integrity itself.

In January 2004 the US Army 1st Armoured Division did the unthinkable. They made a camp beneath the great turqoise dome of the Shaheed (Martyrs) Memorial to the dead of the Iran-Iraq war, where the names of over half a million dead are inscribed in marble, in memorium, that their names, at least, live on. Grafiitti was sprayed on the names, the Division's motto obliterted others. The Museum where foreign dignitaries and families had brought items in honour of the fallen was, of course, looted. (Agencies, websites.) The dome is split, allowing the souls of the dead to fly heavenward. A great fountain flowed to the courtyard below - representing endless tears, or eternity as represented by the Euphrates river, depending on who one asked. A place of memory is, anyway, in the interpretation of those who visit and the solace found there.

On November 2nd the landmark statue of Abu Ja'afar Al Mansour (713-775AD) founder of Baghdad, was destroyed by a bomb.(8) No Baghdadi, Iraqi or Arab, would, arguably, blow up this revered historical figure, creator of' the city named over the centuries: 'The Paris of the Ninth Century', 'Mother of the World', 'Abode of Peace', 'Round City', 'Abode of Beauty', 'Triumph of the Gods' ....(9)

Since journalists are shot and Iraqis lucky to return from a domestic outing in one piece and not in a body bag containing their parts and UNESCO has gone awol, comprehensive records of every day destruction of Iraq's heritage, numerous, haunting, superb statues, sculptures, monuments is impossible. This surely barely scratches the surface. But an important and chilling plea appeared on a website (10). With the benefit of post invasion destruction, it had horrific clarity. From 'An Iraqi Tear' (most 'liberated' Iraqis are more fearful of revealing their identities now than they ever were under Saddam) is a plea to our place in history: 'Please help us protect these monuments.'

'Tear' asserts that the Supreme Committee for de-Ba'athification has now ordered the razing of the turqoise Shaheed monument to rivers of tears and the Monument to the Unknown Soldier. The Unknown Soldier was completed in 1959, the year after the revolution which ironically, toppled the British imposed royal rule, which had opened the door to foreign monopolies plundering the country's oil wealth. It was in homage to all those, who over the centuries: 'fell in defence of the country's dignity and pride.'

'Riverbend' (11) another blogger and insightful, astute chronicler of the Barbarians returned, notes: 'The occupation has ceased to be American. It is American in face, militarily, but in essence, it has metamorphised slowly and surely into an Iranian one.' An astute Midle East watcher remarked recently:'Are you aware that the dominant language among those dominant in the puppet parliament is Farsi?' ( Iran's main language.)

Has an unholy alliance been formed between religious fundamentalism in Washington and Whitehall and religious fundamentalism from Iran which bans 'graven images'? 'Satan lives in Falluja ..' a priest who gives God a bad name, told US troops before they used banned weapons and vapourised much of its population.

When the Taliban ordered the destruction of the ancient Banyiman statues in Afghanistan - the world, including Britain and American governments, declared outrage. Now, from Ur to the threat to Unknown Soldier, they are guilty of crimes of historic enormity. Quite apart from those, unquatifiable, against humanity.

In June 2005, the World Monument Society named, for the first time, an entire country, Iraq, an endangered site. 'Every significant cultural site in Iraq is at risk today ....' It also emphasised: '... preserving 20th century structures ...'

A spokesperson for the Iraqi 'government', boasted after the illegal invasion in 2003: 'We came to power on a CIA train.' By a different route, so did Pol Pot. Spot the difference.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v20/nursey/despair.jpg

Baghdad's many richly evocative landmarks include:

* The great Liberty Monument in Liberation Square, depicting struggles through the ages; bronze relief figures on marble, by the late Jewad Selim.

* The golden figure of Karamana, Ali Baba's housekeeper, from the 'Arabian Nights', surrounded by the great urns where the forty thieves hid. Water, in place of the boiling oil of the story, flows from a great vessel in her hands.By Mohammed Ghani: 'the exuberant sculpture', an object of wonder.

* The Hammurabni Obelisk, in Qhatan Square,honouring the great Babylonian King and lawmaker (1792-1750 BC) by Salen Al-Karaghoulli. The original Obelisk isin the Lovre, Paris.

* Al-Khalil bin Ahmad Al-Faharidi (AD 718-786) staue in Masbah Park, honouring the philologist and grammarian who wrote the first Arab dictionary and works on melody and rhythm.

* Abbas bin Firnas, ninth century philosopher, poet and inventor, is immortalised by Sculpture Badri Al-Sammarra'i, near the Airport.His theories and experiments on the possibility of human flight earned him the name of 'First Arab Flyer.'

* Hammurabi's robed statue, by Mohammed Ghani, graces central Haifa Street, utterly evocative, Babalonia's wonders revisited.

* The Arab horseman in Mansour Square, by Miran Al-Sa'adi celebrates the Arab love of horsemanship and its association with 'gallantry,courage and generosity'.

* Abu-Nasr Al-Farabi (AD 874-950) created by Ismail Fattah in 1965,one of the Arab world's greatest ancient philosophers and academics, stands in Zawra Park. He was 'The Second Teacher', the First being Aristotle.

* Yahya Al-Wasiti, painter and calligrapher, completed his extraordinary illustrations of Maqamat Al-Hariri,in 1223.An original manuscript is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The statue celebrating him is in Zawra Park,by Ismael Fattah.

This random selection of Baghdad's celebration of Mesopotamia's lives, ancient and modern can only fail to convey the extent of its wonderous cultural wealth. Wealth whose preservation is the duty and responsibility of the occupying forces.

[MEDICVET]

the loss of great historical and archealogical artifacts such as these is a shame. It is a shame when it is done by others, and it is a shame when done by us.

[DrBungle]

http://www.drimple.net/art015.jpg

[Nursey]

the loss of great historical and archealogical artifacts such as these is a shame. It is a shame when it is done by others, and it is a shame when done by us.

'A shame' suggests to me that you haven't really grasped the full magnitude of this (correctly termed) crime against humanity.

[DangerousDan]

the loss of great historical and archealogical artifacts such as these is a shame. It is a shame when it is done by others, and it is a shame when done by us.

'A shame' suggests to me that you haven't really grasped the full magnitude of this (correctly termed) crime against humanity.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v652/Onlinepictures/avatar4739_0.jpg

You said it Nursey! Boy!!

[Nursey]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v20/nursey/dan1.jpg

Fool.

[DangerousDan]

Fool.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v652/Onlinepictures/DSC03368.jpg

I pity the foo who call Mr. T a foo

[Nursey]

It's probably my own fault...the stupid big pics could probably have been avoided if i hadn't put the word 'mongols' in a thread at fugly. It attracts all the wrong sorts.

[DangerousDan]

It's probably my own fault...the stupid big pics could probably have been avoided if i hadn't put the word 'mongols' in a thread at fugly. It attracts all the wrong sorts.

Gee Nursey, that reminds me of the story of The Eight White Ordon. You see after the Khan's death in 1227, his body was buried secretly according to the custom of the Mongols. The burial place still remains as a secret but I suspect it is somewhere in the Altai Mountains. The Mongols started to commemorate their great leader and founder of the nation right after his death. The Eight White Ordon in Ejen-Khoroo, Ordos, Inner Mongolia were probably set up in these days.......... he he he he............ anyhoo I don't want to talk your beutiful ear off.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v652/Onlinepictures/avatar4739_0.jpg

[Nursey]

Well that's me told. :|

[Nursey]

Interesting poles here.
The land and the people that gave birth to our present civilisation being destroyed by weaponry at the most cutting edge of the human race's technological achievements...and now... the earliest and in my view most important artifacts in the human race's heritage... recording the very seeds of civilised thought* - the dawn of civilisation , thousands of intricately etched clay tablets ( most of which have still to be translated ) which have miraculously survived the ravages of thousands of years worth of history in one of the most tumultuous and intense hotbeds of human activity on the planet.....now, in the year 2003, being left open to the elements of chaos and destruction (as if it was worthless rubbish, when it is of inestimable value to the human race...far more than gold - or oil...to civilised thinkers anyway) resulting from the circumstances wreaked upon the region by an outside invading force of the number one superpower which has just carved out the role of number one most powerful agressor on the planet today, responsible for the single most deadly blow ever dealt to the UN , figureheaded by an illiterate sociopath who makes a living mockery of the worthiest traits in human nature...the record holding Texan executionist and retard killer...George W Bush...whose actions are undoing the greatest achievements of every civilised human that has ever contributed to the furtherance of the human race and dragging us all into a living nightmare world of complete chaos, lawlessness and destruction.

XerxesX...who is more civilised...those who have safeguarded humanity's heritage or those who are destroying it?

[XerxesX]

Nursey is right. The price of a few more decades of Bath-style torture would have been a small price to pay for the recovery of this clay. ( No kidding ) This clay has a value far exeeding that of individual lives. A teacher I once had was iraqi. ( Her father was a professor of archaeology, as well as a prominent communist party member ). They had clay and stones stuffed around their place and this shit ( dung ) is incalculable. Iraquis on the other hand, we have plenty of. ( Besides; The torturefanatics could still get some out of Yankee-style beating. And with better mediacoverage ) :wink:

[Nursey]

Oh Jesus! Here we fucking go! The west is destroying Iraq from all angles for the *sake of it's people*.{insert smug, sanctamonious smile with head tilted to one side} Isn't that niiice.
That arguement can simply get to fuck. :lol:
The Iraqi standard of living has now slipped below the pre-war level which was not good back then due to the sanctions - but now it is even worse.
So they have suffered all those hundreds of thousands of deaths and maimings at the hand of the Americans, only to become more impoverished while billions of their money is stolen and they suffer from poorer health service etc. They have all the worst aspects of Baathist rule magnified by a thousand, but with none of the benefits, which undoubtedly existed.

And as if i was saying that archeological heritage is more important than human life! :roll:
So would you say that ancient manuscripts made out of animal skins are just trash too? Don't you realise that the baked clay was just the medium for the writing on it - you seem to think that the value lay in the baked clay (not 'dung' as you so kindly informed us)!? If that is the case, why are people paying thousands of pounds for these ancient clay tablets?

[XerxesX]

Nope ! Clay and dirt whatever. And if ( As you say ) They have skins to. That is really important parts of the world heritage. It is clear that the USarmed forces that went in had no idea what they faced.

That must be blamed on Harvard. Since they are the ones that provided war-president G.W.Bush with his info on history and civilisations passed.
They made a big show with those iraqis beating saddam-sattues with shoes ( and giving this to the press ) while the cultural treasures suffered.

You are right that the west is destroying Iraq from all ( possible ) angles.
But at the same time , making them able to fight the insurgency. ( Lets say Muslem insurgent is good, and bath-party insurgent is bad ).

Yes ! The standard of living has slipped since Saddam saw his "great" opportunity to hassle Iran and make an empire for himself. ( Rumsfeldt and Saddam shaking hands ). Howdydody and all that.

My friends from this country were educated during Saddams regime and they used the good education they had to oppose him. When they thought the americans were coming. ( The leaflets from the skies lied ) And Senior backed out.

PS the standard of living before Saddam went to war against Iran was really super. After Iran showed that they had no problem with sending 500 000 15years olds on to the field and sacrificing them to their ( realtime ) G-d. Then it was another matter. MATTER.MATTER.

[XerxesX]

And as if i was saying that archeological heritage is more important than human life!

Sometimes you just have to choose buddy. ( The educational failure of the "Ivy" leaf should be implemented ) The last place corrupted should be that of education. :lol:

[Nursey]

It is clear that the USarmed forces that went in had no idea what they faced.


Utter bullshit. They certainly had enough warnings from the leading authorities on the matter! And then when it was clear what was happening, they stood back and did absolutely nothing and in some cases aided and/or carried out the looting! And of course, they had enough foresight to protect the oil ministry.

In January 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, an American delegation of scholars, museum directors, art collectors, and antiquities dealers met with officials at the Pentagon to discuss the forthcoming invasion. They specifically warned that Baghdad's National Museum was the single most important site in the country. McGuire Gibson of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute said, "I thought I was given assurances that sites and museums would be protected." Gibson went back to the Pentagon twice to discuss the dangers, and he and his colleagues sent several e-mail reminders to military officers in the weeks before the war began.

However, a more *ominous* indicator of things to come was reported in the April 14, 2003, London Guardian: Rich American collectors with connections to the White House were busy "persuading the Pentagon to relax legislation that protects Iraq's heritage by prevention of sales abroad." On January 24, 2003, some sixty New York-based collectors and dealers organized themselves into a new group called the American Council for Cultural Policy and met with Bush administration and Pentagon officials to argue that a post-Saddam Iraq should have relaxed antiquities laws. Opening up private trade in Iraqi artifacts, they suggested, would offer such items better security than they could receive in Iraq. Source (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0708-29.htm)


Moreover, on March 26, 2003, the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), headed by Lt. Gen. (ret.) Jay Garner -- the civil authority the U.S. had set up for the moment hostilities ceased -- sent to all senior U.S. commanders a list of sixteen institutions that "merit securing as soon as possible to prevent further damage, destruction, and/or pilferage of records and assets." The five-page memo dispatched two weeks before the fall of Baghdad also said, "Coalition forces must secure these facilities in order to prevent looting and the resulting irreparable loss of cultural treasures" and that "looters should be arrested/detained." First on Gen. Garner's list of places to protect was the Iraqi Central Bank, which is now a ruin; second was the Museum of Antiquities. Sixteenth was the Oil Ministry, the only place that U.S. forces occupying Baghdad actually defended. Martin Sullivan, chair of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property for the previous eight years, and Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and a member of the committee, both resigned to protest the failure of CENTCOM to obey orders. Sullivan said it was "inexcusable" that the museum should not have had the same priority as the Oil Ministry.


As we now know, the American forces made no effort to prevent the looting of the great cultural institutions of Iraq, its soldiers simply watching vandals enter and torch the buildings. Said Arjomand, an editor of the journal Studies on Persianate Societies and a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, wrote, "Our troops, who have been proudly guarding the Oil Ministry, where no window is broken, deliberately condoned these horrendous events."[19] American commanders claim that, to the contrary, they were too busy fighting and had too few troops to protect the museum and libraries. However, this seems to be an unlikely explanation. During the battle for Baghdad, the U.S. military was perfectly willing to dispatch some 2,000 troops to secure northern Iraq's oilfields, and their record on antiquities did not improve when the fighting subsided. At the 6,000-year-old Sumerian city of Ur with its massive ziggurat, or stepped temple-tower (built in the period 2112 - 2095 B.C. and restored by Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century B.C.), the Marines spray-painted their motto, "Semper Fi" (semper fidelis, always faithful) onto its walls.[20] The military then made the monument "off limits" to everyone in order to disguise the desecration that had occurred there, including the looting by U.S. soldiers of clay bricks used in the construction of the ancient buildings.

And none of this even begins to deal with the massive, ongoing looting of historical sites across Iraq by freelance grave and antiquities robbers, preparing to stock the living rooms of western collectors. The unceasing chaos and lack of security brought to Iraq in the wake of our invasion have meant that a future peaceful Iraq may hardly have a patrimony to display. It is no small accomplishment of the Bush administration to have plunged the cradle of the human past into the same sort of chaos and lack of security as the Iraqi present.

U.S. Charged With War Crimes (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3465.htm)

The Evidence File



Protection and organization of Looting

1. The obligation to ensure public order and security

More damaging than the direct impact of the fighting was the looting and arson that erupted as soon as the U.S. and British troops had gained control over the cities. This is particularly alarming as the occupying powers have the responsibility to ensure public order and safety. Moreover, the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an occupying power has the duty "of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territories."
US and UK authorities were repeatedly warned before the conflict by Amnesty International and others that there was a grave risk of widespread disorder, humanitarian crisis and human rights abuses, including revenge attacks, once the Iraqi government's authority was removed. Now that US/UK forces are occupying substantial parts of Iraq, they must live up to their specific responsibilities under international human rights and humanitarian law to protect the rights of Iraqi people.
Referring to the scenes of looting, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan is reported to have said: "Obviously law and order must be a major concern…I think the (Security) Council has also reaffirmed that the Hague Regulation and the Geneva Conventions [on the duties of occupying powers] apply to this conflict and that the coalition has the responsibility for the welfare of the people in this area. And I am sure that will be respected". (AI Index: MDE14/085/2003 Amnesty International)


You are right that the west is destroying Iraq from all ( possible ) angles.

Yes. What is otherwise known as GENOCIDE.

[Nursey]

Iraq Art - A Forseeable Tragedy (http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20030417-21214.html)

That Iraq's museums would be pillaged was a forseeable thing, writes Kenneth Baker. "We have to wonder how the Pentagon and the State Department could fail to see the cultural calamity coming, such a predictable consequence of urban war chaos. Weeks before the invasion, the Archaeological Institute of America published an 'Open Declaration on Cultural Heritage at Risk in Iraq,' signed by hundreds of scholars from around the world."

America's Contempt For History (Other Than Its Own) (http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20030417-21250.html)

Allowing the destruction of Iraq's art shows the contempt the United States has for other cultures. "The notion that Iraq even has history - let alone that 7,000 years ago this land was the cradle of civilization - is not likely to occur to the neocolonialists running a brawny young nation barely more than 200 years old. The United States' earnest innocence is the charm that our entertainment industry markets so successfully around the world, but it is also the perennial seed of disaster as we blithely rearrange corners of the planet we only pretend to understand."


Cultural History Theft - An Organized Racket (http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20030417-21251.html)

"Stealing a country’s physical history, its archaeological remains, has become the world’s third biggest organised racket, after drugs and guns. There are those who argue that it shouldn’t need to be illegal at all. There are those who say, look, the free market should operate here. Why shouldn’t a private collector be allowed to buy an antiquity and keep it in his bathroom, maybe next to the bidet, or as a tasteful holder for the Toilet Duck, if he wishes to do so, and if both he and the seller are happy with the price? You will not be surprised to hear that many of those who argue this way are American. You may not be surprised, either, that shortly before the invasion of Iraq, and with the spoils of war on their mind, some of these people formed themselves into a lobbying organisation called the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP).

[size=15px]Destruction of An Historic Culture (http://www.artsjournal.com/ideas/redir/20030618-24967.html)

Iraq was once a center for art and culture. But it has been in "steep decline for twenty years. The loss into exile of three million people, among them many of the country's most gifted, has arguably been far more destructive than recent wartime damage. The reduction of the entire middle class to deep poverty, one result of the international sanctions imposed since 1990, compounded the misery. The sanctions — or, as Iraqis say, the siege—had the further effect of sealing them off from advances elsewhere in the world, and even from the hope of catching up. In the past decade a kind of rottenness set in. When I saw Baghdad in 1990, with its neat, palm-lined boulevards, it looked not unlike Kuwait or Riyadh. A decade later the city looked more like Khartoum or Kinshasa, a place of brownouts, grasping bureaucrats, and leaky drains, its broken streets packed with the aimless unemployed."

Destroying Iraq's Museum - One Tank Could Have Saved It (http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20030413-20826.html)

The looting of the Iraq Museum is a loss for the world. "The losses will be felt worldwide, but its greatest impact will be on the Iraqi people themselves when it comes to rebuilding their sense of national identity. International cultural organisations had urged before the war that the cultural heritage of Iraq, which has more than 10,000 archaeological sites, be spared. US forces are making a belated attempt to protect the National Museum, calling on Iraqi policemen to turn up for duty. There is no pay, but 80 have given their services. 'The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened. I hold the American troops responsible. They know that this is a museum. They protect oil ministries but not the cultural heritage'."


Museum Looters Were Pros (http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20030418-21258.html)

The looting of Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities was no mere grab-and-go act by a desperate citizenry. According to UNESCO, the vast majority of the museum thefts were perpetrated by professional art thieves who knew exactly what to take, and where to find it. "Museum officials in Baghdad told UNESCO that one group of thieves had keys to an underground vault where the most valuable artifacts were stored. The thefts were probably the work of international gangs who hired Iraqis for the job, and who have been active in recent years doing illegal excavations at Iraqi archaeological digs." Washington Post 04/18/03

The Real Cost of the Baghdad Looting (http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20030418-21259.html)

Although Americans may find it convenient to think of the Middle East as a land of barbaric, uncultured souls prone to unstoppable violence, the recent horrific and systematic destruction of Iraq's cultural firmament points up how wrong these misconceptions truly are. When Baghdad's central library burned to the ground last week, centuries of irreplacable cultural scholarship were lost to the world. Iraq has always taken great pride in its culture and its history, and has catalogued both with a meticulousness which 'cultured' Americans have never matched. "Since 1967, the country has had stringent laws preventing the export of antiquities. One of the saddest ironies of the destruction is that Iraq's defense of its cultural heritage was considered a model for the region."

[Nursey]

Apologies for the last couple of links which aren't working.

In archaeological circles, Iraq is known as "the cradle of civilization," with a record of culture going back more than 7,000 years. William R. Polk, the founder of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, says, "It was there, in what the Greeks called Mesopotamia, that life as we know it today began: there people first began to speculate on philosophy and religion, developed concepts of international trade, made ideas of beauty into tangible forms, and, above all developed the skill of writing."[2] No other places in the Bible except for Israel have more history and prophecy associated with them than Babylonia, Shinar (Sumer), and Mesopotamia -- different names for the territory that the British around the time of World War I began to call "Iraq," using the old Arab term for the lands of the former Turkish enclave of Mesopotamia (in Greek: "between the [Tigris and Eurphrates] rivers").[3] Most of the early books of Genesis are set in Iraq (see, for instance, Genesis 10:10, 11:31; also Daniel 1-4; II Kings 24).

The best-known of the civilizations that make up Iraq's cultural heritage are the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids, and Muslims. On April 10, 2003, in a television address, President Bush acknowledged that the Iraqi people are "the heirs of a great civilization that contributes to all humanity."[4.] Only two days later, under the complacent eyes of the U.S. Army, the Iraqis would begin to lose that heritage in a swirl of looting and burning.

In September 2004, in one of the few self-critical reports to come out of Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication wrote: "The larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended."[5] Nowhere was this failure more apparent than in the indifference -- even the glee -- shown by Rumsfeld and his generals toward the looting on April 11 and 12, 2003, of the National Museum in Baghdad and the burning on April 14, 2003, of the National Library and Archives as well as the Library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowments. These events were, according to Paul Zimansky, a Boston University archaeologist, "the greatest cultural disaster of the last 500 years." Eleanor Robson of All Souls College, Oxford, said, "You'd have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find looting on this scale."[6] Yet Secretary Rumsfeld compared the looting to the aftermath of a soccer game and shrugged it off with the comment that "Freedom's untidy. . . . Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes."[7]source (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0708-29.htm)

[Nursey]

Sometimes you just have to choose buddy.

Do you have homosexual fantasies about me?