New book by George McGovern and William Polk warns US risks going down as barbarian invader
Some American facilities have done enormous and irreparable damage. Astonishingly,
one American camp was built on top of the Babylon archaeological site, where American troops
flattened and compressed ancient ruins in order to create a helicopter pad and fueling stations.
Soldiers filled sandbags with archaeological fragments and dug trenches through unexcavated areas
while tanks crushed 2,600-year-old pavements. Babylon was not the only casualty. The 5,000-year-
old site at Kish was also horribly damaged. We need to understand that Iraq, being a seedbed of
Western civilization, is a virtual museum. It is hard to put a spade into the earth there without
disturbing a part of our shared cultural heritage. We suggest that America set up a fund of, say,
$750 million, or three days' cost of the war, to be administered by an ad-hoc committee drawn from
the Iraqi National Museum of Antiquities or the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, the
British Museum, the World Monuments Fund, the Smithsonian Institution, and what is perhaps
America's most prestigious archaeological organization, the Oriental Institute of the University
of Chicago, to assist in the restoration of sites American troops have damaged. We should not wish
to go down in history as yet another barbarian invader of the land long referred to as the cradle
of civilization...
Read entire article at From an excerpt from Out of Iraq, by George McGovern and William Polk