Other forms of destruction in Iraq besides the countless bombed Iraqis. How 
anyone rebuild cultural repositories? Hmmmm!
--Emilie

>This hasn't yet been reported in the general press yet. What a tragedy!
>After the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad.
>
>__________________________________________________
>http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=25219
>
>Islamic Library Burned to the Ground
>4/15/2003
>
>Robert Fisk, The Independent
>
>
>BAGHDAD, 15 April 2003 ≈ So yesterday was the burning of books. First
>came the looters, then came the arsonists. It was the final chapter in
>the sack of Baghdad. The National Library and Archives ≈ a priceless
>treasure of Ottoman historical documents including the old royal
>archives of Iraq ≈ were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then
>the Islamic Library of Qur▓ans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment
>was set ablaze. I saw the looters.
>
>One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from
>a boy who could have been no more than 10 years old. Amid the ashes of
>hundreds of years of Iraqi history, I found just one file blowing in the
>wind outside: Pages and pages of handwritten letters between the court
>of Sherif Hussein of Makkah ≈ 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 Ottoman troops, reports on the theft of camels and
>attacks on pilgrims, all of them 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 Qur▓anic library of the ministry, the
>cultural identity of Iraq is being erased.
>
>Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being
>destroyed? When I caught sight of the Qur▓anic library burning ≈ there
>were flames 100 feet high bursting from the windows ≈ I raced to the
>offices of the occupying power, the US Marines▓ civil affairs bureau, to
>report what I had seen. An officer shouted to a colleague that ⌠this guy
>says some Biblical (sic) library is on fire.■ I gave the map location,
>the precise name ≈ in Arabic and English ≈ of the fire, I said that the
>smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five
>minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn▓t an American at
>the scene ≈ and the flames were now shooting 200 feet into the air.
>
>There was a time when the Arabs said that their books were written in
>Cairo, printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in
>Baghdad. In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of
>the caliphate, but even the dark years of the country▓s modern history,
>hand-written accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, an entire library of
>Western newspapers ≈ bound volumes of the Financial Times were lying on
>the pavement ≈ and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to
>the early 1900s.
>
>__________________________________________________
>Arab News
>Saudi Arabia's First English Language Daily
>http://www.arabnews.com/

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