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Well, it seems as if the U.S. Armed Forces have yet again shown its lack of sensitivity to world culture with the damage to 2600-year old Babylon in Iraq. Add this cost to all the others in this useless war:

In an interview Saturday with Associated Press Television News, Iraq's Minister of Culture Mufeed al-Jazairee said coalition troops in Babylon had used "armored vehicles and helicopters that land and take off freely. In addition to that, the forces also set up other facilities and changes."

He added: "I expect that the archaeological city of Babylon has sustained damage but I don't know exactly the size of such damage."

John Curtis, keeper of the British Museum's Near East department, who was invited by the Iraqis to study the site, found that large quantities of sand mixed with archaeological fragments have been taken from the site to fill military sandbags.

"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," Curtis said in the report.

Lord Redesdale, an archaeologist who heads a parliamentary archaeology committee, described the report's findings as "just dreadful."

"Not only is what the American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it's actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world," he said.

For more than 1,000 years, Babylon was one of the world's premier cities, where King Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

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