OT: Re: [lug] Letting Bush do the Arithmetic... Burning Books in Baghdad

[Case Jones]

Please forward widely.

Robert Fisk: Library books, letters and priceless documents are set 
ablaze in final chapter of the sacking of Baghdad

"I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book 
of Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi 
history, I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of 
handwritten letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who 
started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and 
the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.

And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, 
letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for 
ammunition for troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on 
pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in 
my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history. But for 
Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the 
Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National 
Archives and then the Koranic library, the cultural identity of Iraq is 
being erased. Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this 
heritage being destroyed? "

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=397350