Here’s a chance for ecology-minded posters to express their appreciation to the President for overthrowing a regime that destroyed the largest wetland in the Middle East. Victory over Saddam has created a possibility of restoring these wetlands.
. . . while Bush gave vandals and theives the opportunity to destroy and steal irreplaceable cultural resources in Iraq.
This is in the Pit why?
'Cause it’s december.
Thank Gop! Now there was a valid reason to invade Iraq! No WMDs, but wetland restorations. These neocons are “neo” for a whole bunch of different reasons than I thought: they care about the welfare of people not themselves, they care about the environment. I’m switching parties!
And while we’re at it, let’s thank President Bush for jump-starting urban renewal in Iraq, by having cleared Baghdad of numerous structures no longer needed by the previous government.
I hear Rumsfeld is going to be on Meet the Press this week to talk about the Houston problem.
Sua Sponte told me that Hussein used WMD against the marsh Arabs after 1991. Here, this doesn’t seem to be the case. What is the truth? Did Hussein “gas his own people” at any time other than the Kurds before gulf war I?
well, apparently Californians aren’t as efficient as Iraq
december - I don’t recall anyone advocating that SH wasn’t a totally horrible person, destroyer of resources, killer of his own people, etc etc etc.
Nor did anyone suggest that the Iraqi people wouldn’t be better off w/o him.
or Iraq itself.
some folks questioned the wisdom and ‘rightness’ of this war, despite the fact there would be some excellent consequences from SH not being in power.
With each thread like this, I become a little more cynical. It is becoming abundantly clear that the folks that are in favor of this war are grasping at straws to justify the continued stupidity.
Well, Binarydrone, I have no argument with your cynical response, but for me, I’m just going to laugh my ass off at the ridiculous idea that Iraqi marshes register in the brain of the beloved President George III.
Heh. december != “folks that are in favor of this war.”
Think of him as the pro-war equivalent of the “It’s all about oil! Down with global capitalism!” crowd on the anti side.
Although, now that I think about it, Jeb Bush was a big force pushing Clinton into the big program to protect the Florida swamp, which G.W. has continued. Maybe the Bush family loves mosquitos? 
Before the war I heard no pro-war person advocate it because it would lead to improved riparian ecological systems. Nor did I hear anyone oppose the war because an important museum would be looted. Still, should we not cheer unexpected good consequences, just as we complain about unexected bad consequences?
It’s a shame that Interior Secretary Gale Norton is prevented from managing those wetlands. Then she could kill off the last dugongs like she did the salmon in the Klamath River.
It’s hypocrisy of the most insulting sort to attempt to give the Republican party some sort of credit for arresting an environmental disaster in Iraq when they are actively perpetrating dozens of them here in the United States.
Keep looking, though. You guys will find a reason for fighting that war sooner or later.
Actually, the administration was warned repeatedly by archaeologists and others that the National Museum and other sites would be in dire peril.
Don’t be so hard on Uday. The stuff was rightly his.
I seriously doubt remdiating the wetlands of the Tigris-Euphrates watershed is even on the Bush’s Iraq reconstruction list?
Me,as well. Every time I hear the ecology mentioned in the USA, the phrase “those damned liberals” isn’t far away.
Nope. This is a bad idea. I work in restoration, and I don’t think that there’s any feasible project here.
In the preliminary analysis of any restoration project, you have to look at what’s called the “capacity” of the area. The capacity is sort of an idealized concept of how much better you can make the wetland with your project. Everything that we do within the areas, near the wetland area, and in the watershed that drains to the wetland area affects the capacity. Most wetlands near areas that we’ve developed can’t be restored to pristine condition - the capacity analysis is a tool that helps us decide how much work we can do, and how much benefit we can get out of the money we spend.
Wetland restoration is not a one-time deal. It’s more analogous to building a road - you put a lot of capital and work into constructing a highway, and the majority of the money and effort is expended on the front end. But you still have to maintain it - the road needs to be resurfaced sometimes, potholes need to be filled, the right-of-way needs to be cleared periodically of vegetation that can obstruct traffic, load limits have to be observed, etc. If the road isn’t maintained, then it pretty quicly becomes something less than a road - still usable as a transportation corridor, but with limits. Maybe it’s not suitable anymore for all vehicles, or not passable during every season. It’s better than going overland, but not by much.
The same thing happens to a restoration project. If we completely restore a wetland (creating a meandering low-flow channel, reestablishing native vegetation, reestablishing the natural drainage patterns both to and from the area, recreating the natural sediment load and water quality entering the wetland, and reestablishing native wildlife in the area), but then don’t change any of the land management patterns around the wetland, we’ve just wasted a whole lot of money on a project that will be around for a few years, but eventually will return to what it was before the restoration. In order for a restoration project to be succesful, land management must be a part of the design, and it has to be monitored and enforced.
To do this in Iraq during the rebuilding that has to go on there would be incredibly counterproductive. In the U.S., we can sell people on the idea of restoring wetlands because their basic needs have been met. In Iraq, there’s no way we could say to anyone, “yes, I know that’s the shortest way, but you can’t put a road there because we want to make it back into a swamp.” Bad science, bad investment, and bad public relations.
If the administration really wants to look like it’s doing something for the environment, maybe it could restore some of my funding sources that have been decimated during the last two years.
This is a competent, intelligent, informative post which shows the situation is not incredibly simple. 
What on earth is it doing in a December thread? 