Trivial Casualties of Bush's War 
Now, our presence is being felt once again as the destroyer of human history.
For three long years, U.S. troops have wrecked what little remained of the ancient city of Babylon.They've built roads over the 5,000-year-old walls, poured a concrete helicopter landing pad over an archaeological site, filled sandbags with "soil rich with precious artifacts" and dug trenches through temples.
At least those sins were done for military reasons. There's no such excuse for the graffiti left by American Marines ("Cruz chillen' in Saddam's spot") or the thousands of precious objects the troops sifted from the sand to take home as souvenirs. Looted cuneiform tablets from Babylonian museums have already shown up on eBay.
This week, the former chief of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq offered the lamest of apologies to Dr. Donny George, Iraq's chief of antiquities. "If it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one," Coleman told the BBC.If such a snide apology made Dr. George feel any better, he hasn't mentioned it -- three years of organized looting, pointless destruction and American indifference has not made his job especially easy.
"One day millions of people will visit Babylon," Dr. George told the New York Times this week. "I'm just not sure anybody knows when."
The ham-fisted actions of the occupation forces were never even necessary, because the site of Babylon has been one of the quietest in all of Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The ruins are just outside of Hilla, a mixed city of Shiites and Sunnis who aren't at each other's throats. Here, factories kept operating and schools kept teaching kids.
The U.S. military has finally acknowledged its presence in Hilla and Babylon is neither needed nor wanted. The roughly-treated Babylonian ruins have reportedly been handed over to local security forces.
Now Dr. George and his team of archaeologists are faced with an impossible clean-up job.
"How are we supposed to get rid of the helipad now?" he asked. "With jackhammers? Can you imagine taking a jackhammer to the remains of one of the most important cities in the history of mankind? I mean, come on, this is Babylon."
Read the entire shocking story here.
KEYWORDS: Babylon, History, Iraq War
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