Once-beautiful Baghdad has become an eyesore

[Viva_La_Revolution]

March 25, 2005

Once-beautiful Baghdad has become an eyesore


By RAWYA RAGEH
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Baghdad, whose name means the "Garden of God," has fallen from grace. Known for centuries as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, its landscape has been marred by concrete blast walls, barbed wire, steel barricades, sandbags and crumbling buildings pockmarked by bullet holes or gutted by explosions.

Things have gotten so bad that the Iraqi capital has dropped to the bottom of a quality of life survey of 215 cities, conducted by the London-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

"We used to be under sanctions and the economic conditions were dire, but never was the city so ugly. Between the chopped trees and the burned houses, it's a total mess," said 61-year-old Fadhila Dawoud, a teacher who used to take her students on picnics along the banks of the Tigris. Now they hold picnics in the school courtyard.

more >http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=75984

Makes me ill. All that knowledge and history obliterated.