Robert Fisk provides us with two contrasting articles about the situation in Iraq. The first describes what the Americans are allowing to burn in Iraq. The second, discusses what is being saved.
“Anxious to ‘liberate’ Iraq, it allows its people to destroy the infrastructure of government as well as the private property of Saddam’s henchmen. Americans insist that the oil ministry is a vital part of Iraq’s inheritance, that the oilfields are to be held in trust ‘for the Iraqi people’. But is the Ministry of Trade relit yesterday by an enterprising arsonist not vital to the future of Iraq? Are the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Irrigation still burning fiercely not of critical importance to the next government? The Americans could spare 2,000 soldiers to protect the Kirkuk oilfields but couldn’t even invest 200 to protect the Mosul museum from attack. US engineers were confidently predicting that the Kirkuk oilfield will be capable of pumping again ‘within weeks.’”