U.S. admits military damaged Babylon ruins

by **greencrow0** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 1:50 am

U.S. admits military damaged Babylon ruins Officer offers apology, but says having no troops would have been worse Bullit Marquez / AP file The ruins of the ancient City of Babylon are shown on July 16, 2003, from the nearby palace of Saddam Hussein. View related photos NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE Updated: 1:02 p.m. ET April 14, 2006 LONDON - A senior U.S. military officer has said he is willing to apologize for damage his troops caused to one of Iraq’s most famous ancient sites. The British Broadcasting Corp. reported Friday that after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. Marines had built a helicopter pad on the ruins of Babylon and filled their sandbags with archaeological fragments from the ancient city. It said vibrations from U.S. helicopters caused the roof of one building to collapse. Col. John Coleman, former chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, told the BBC that if the head of the Iraqi antiquities board wanted an apology, and “if it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one.” But he also asked: “If it wasn’t for our presence, what would the state of those archaeological ruins be?” The Marines spent five months in 2003 based at Babylon, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Last year, the British Museum said that U.S.-led troops using Babylon as a base had damaged and contaminated artifacts dating back thousands of years. The German Archaeological Institute said U.S. and Polish troops based at Babylon had caused “massive damage” to the site in 2003 and 2004. Coleman said his Marines had worked in “close consultation” with Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities.<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/roll.gif ALT=":rollin"> He said occupying the site was better than leaving it to looters in the chaos of postwar Iraq. “Is there a price for the presence? Sure there is,” he said. “I’ll just say that the price had the presence not been there would have been far greater.” For more than 1,000 years, Babylon was one of the world’s finest cities, where Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The city declined and fell into ruin after it was conquered by the Persians under Cyrus the Great around 538 B.C.

by **greencrow0** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 1:53 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. Marines had built a helicopter pad on the ruins of Babylon and filled their sandbags with archaeological fragments from the ancient city. It said vibrations from U.S. helicopters caused the roof of one building to collapse.<hr></blockquote> <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eek.gif ALT=":eek">

by **StarmanSkye** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:28 am

"He said occupying the site was better than leaving it to looters in the chaos of postwar Iraq." The ultimate strawman blame-game -- By invading Iraq and undermining its civil society, the US assumed responsibility for all post-war security and to protect the nation's institutions, resources, people and treasures until Iraq's institutions could be rebuilt. Recall, the Bush Admin. tossed-aside the comprehensive post-war recovery plans compiled by dozens of experts considering every aspect of what would be needed, what could be anticipated and planned-for in postwar Iraq --the planning undertook by the Clinton admin. This dismissal and failure to provide alternative in-depth planning was almost as wanton and irresponsible an act as the war-crimes of illegal invasion and atrocities and carelessness, of grevious mistakes and failures and errors that weren't actively prevented. But its the same mindset that refuses to take responsibility for US policy under the same kind of faulty, irresponsible thinking and end-justifies-means exceptionalism that overthrew Iraq's government and helped install Saddam as the West's 'strongman in the Middle East' in the first place. You'd almost think this happened in another parrallel universe for the lack of play it gets in what passes for the US 'free press.' The fact of America's and its leader's true lack of moral conscience and allegiance to Christian precepts despite their holy posturing is evident in that none of them, including Bush, ever visibly quaked and trembled in consideration of the awful Hells they must surely endure in atonement for the horrors they unleashed on innocents (that is, IF America truly reflected a 'Trust in God'), at least in lieu of a contrite public confession. Starman

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:57 am

Team America without the jokes.

by **greencrow0** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 12:12 pm

Why did the occupiers allow the destruction of Iraq's antiquities? It's standard practice for empires to destroy the culture of the countries they invade. It is psychological warfare at its most effective. You go to the very heart of the indigenous people's identity and destroy the symbols of that identity...then the people become so disoriented, depressed and lacking in self confidence that they become [hopefully] maleable and compliant. It is the global version of putting a bag on an individual's head, stripping him and forcing him to do indecent acts....which is a denial of his essence as a human being. The landing of the US helicopters on the roofs of the ancient city of BABYLON were no fluke or accident or 'necessity of war'...it happened because it was an act of dominance and distain for the places the Iraqis cherished...same as the systematic destruction of the mosques that's going on now. The big caveat to all this is that the US, by destroying the artificats of the ancient civilization in Iraq are also destroying the roots of western heritage...so, in a strange sense, they are acting like aliens from another planet, 'doing the emperial thing' on all humans. We all share in the BABYLONIAN heritage to an extent. It is also self destructive because the US also shares in that human treasure....so in that sense it's suicidal. So, in this respect, this act will come back to haunt Amaricans till the end of time...they will not be able to look at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, for example, with the same sense of pride, knowing they wantonly destroyed its precursor in Iraq. This kind of behaviour denigrates all hallowed places of humanity. Finally, if they were thinking that by destroying the ancient temples of Babylon they were going to destroy the Iraqi's sence of self esteem and pride as a nation and a people...well, of course, by now they all know and we all know they were sadly mistaken. As we told them before they attempted this foolish and tragic act, in addition to their hallowed places, the Iraqis have been inocculated against invasions by centuries of cultural inculcation against foreigners. Their religion, their language, their tribal nature were all set up specifically to protect them. That is why, no matter how many artifacts and mosques the invaders destroy, they will never stop being 'crusaders'...fit only for the wood chipper wrath of the Iraqi population. It would have been better to have respected Iraqis and their culture, to have stood back and dealt with them fairly, to have offered them a better deal for their oil than the French, Russians and Germans did in the months before the invasion. It would have been better to have trained thousands of Americans to speak Iraqi, to offer to go in and work to enhance their cultural places so that the world could have flocked to that part of the world to share in our communal history. Most of all, it would have been shrewd to the utmost degree to have worked on a settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian dispute...to have put pressure on Israel to find a long range settlement. To have enforced the borders and International law to protect the rights of all Arabs in the ME. Wise and patient leaders would have done such things, but unfortunately, there were none to be had in War-shington at the time. Regards, GC

by **greencrow0** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:39 pm

Images of ancient Babylon <a href="http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=images&imgsz=all&imgc=&vf=photo&va=babylon&fr=ieas&ei=UTF-8">images.search.yahoo.com/s...s&ei=UTF-8</a> <a href="http://architecture.about.com/library/bl-babylon.htm">architecture.about.com/li...abylon.htm</a> Ancient Architecture of Babylon A photo tour by Daniel O'Connell, Gunnery Sergeant, USMC

by **StarmanSkye** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 4:16 pm

GC said: "It would have been better to have respected Iraqis and their culture, to have stood back and dealt with them fairly, to have offered them a better deal for their oil than the French, Russians and Germans did in the months before the invasion. It would have been better to have trained thousands of Americans to speak Iraqi, to offer to go in and work to enhance their cultural places so that the world could have flocked to that part of the world to share in our communal history. "Most of all, it would have been shrewd to the utmost degree to have worked on a settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian dispute...to have put pressure on Israel to find a long range settlement. To have enforced the borders and International law to protect the rights of all Arabs in the ME." *** Well and truly spoken -- It amazes me, well, maybe more accurately 'disgusts' is the better word, that there's like NO thinking or talking in the 'public forum' about what alternative strategems there are or might have been to resolving disputes and disagreements with Iraq --and now Iran-- other than the 'military option' -- even the posturing about 'Diplomacy' is mostly a smokescreen. It's a crisis of true leadership and creativity, a poverty of imagination and cowardice of initiative, perhaps indicative of how abuse of power and our subverted institutions are symptoms of our diseased and dysfunctional American society under a military psyop Command-and-Control mindset. Iraq's piecemeal dissolution, it's 'erasure' of history through the 'accident' of widespread and systematic, even planned and organized looting (recall reports of well-coordinated professional theives who hit the National Museum, knowing exactly where the biggest treasures were and how to get them, arriving and departing in an armed convoy of busses while US troops merely looked on?), the destruction and dismantling of basic civil society institutions, the 'failure' of hospital and school reconstruction through squandering and mismanagement of funds and diversion of resources (contractors just abandoning their unfinished projects with apparently no breach-of-contract penalties, like Wha? Less than 1/4 of hospitals fully restored and functioning as contracted), and the targetted assassination and brain-drain of professionals fleeing the failed state -- Good GOD, Iraq was a model of progressive, modern development in the Middle East in the early 80s, and now it's fragmenting under civil war, with some 1000 people being killed daily, dumped in rivers and ditches and mass-graves -- The Baghdad morgue alone recieves an average of 85 bodies a day -- --quote-- Another group, the People's Kifah, involved hundreds of academics and volunteers in a survey conducted in coordination with "grave-diggers across Iraq." The group said it also "obtained information from hospitals and spoke to thousands of witnesses who saw incidents in which Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. fire." The project was abandoned after one of the researchers was captured by Kurdish militiamen and handed over to U.S. forces. He was never seen again. But in less than two months' work, the group documented about 37,000 violent civilian deaths up to October 2003. The Baghdad central morgue alone accounts for roughly 30,000 bodies annually. That is besides the large number of bodies taken to morgues in cities such as Basra, Mosul, Ramadi, Kirkuk, Irbil, Najaf and Karbala. --unquote-- From: InterPress Service - Apr 15, 2006 <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32896">www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32896</a> Baghdad Morgue Overflowing Daily by Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed The incident detail above stands out, about a member of The People's Kifah which was tabulating civilian deaths from US military incidents who was captured by Kurds and released to US officials, never to be seen again ... America's long, ignominious history with Death Squads has never been adequately investigated, and apparently continues under various guises and covers. Other reports indicate Mossad assassination squads may be involved in targetting Iraqi academics and scientists -- part of what might be seen as undermining Iraq's future. Starman

by **Qutb** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 4:41 pm

GC, I'll echo Starman's praise for what you wrote. Well said.

by **greencrow0** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 5:01 pm

Thank you, starman and outb. GC

U.S. admits military damaged Babylon ruins

U.S. admits military damaged Babylon ruins

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