insight8

insight8: "onder if I might draw attention to a secondary danger that threatens both European and American citizens who could become the involuntary victims of any military operation in Iraq?

There is a real prospect of a massive man-made flood covering a part of the country that contains sites of great archaeological importance. It imperils much that has been achieved by western exploration and scholarship over the past 150 years. Urgent action is called for and archaeologists from several countries, including Britain and the USA, are hoping to mount rescue operations. At the onset of the Gulf War some of us warned of the danger posed by military operations in places such as Babylon, biblical Ur and Erech (Uruk of the present day) and other sites of world renown in the south of the country. As biographer of Leonard Woolley who unveiled Ur and Gertrude Bell who was the founder of the Baghdad Museum and first director of the country's antiquities service, I had a special interest. Now much more familiar treasures are at risk between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. And if the military threat is still in the balance, the flood hazard is actual and urgent in the region that provided almost all the great museums of the West with the massively eloquent wall friezes of mighty Assyria.

A continual reduction in the flow of the Tigris and the consequent dam project which the Iraqis are completing at Ma"