Iraq's onetime Garden of Eden, a vast stretch of wetlands in southern Iraq
known as the Mesopotamian marshlands, destroyed by the 1991 Gulf War and by
Saddam Hussein himself in the 1990s, was the grim setting last week for the
discovery of more than 3,000 graves. The people who lived there were among
Hussein's Shiite targets, and they have been excavating two sites in and near
the marshes looking for relatives. The marshes themselves, which were their
refuge, also became, in Hussein's hands, a major environmental disaster. Even in
the last moment of his regime, Hussein tried to make deadly use of the wetlands
by lifting dam gates to unleash trapped waters into the now parched acres.
Presumably he hoped to slow down the invading American and British troops.
Scientists remain unsure how the flow of water will affect the ecology of the
decimated area, but most agree that nature is the best medicine and the first
fresh water into the marshlands in ...