arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

"In 1971, UNESCO announced that it would help Iraq completely restore the ancient city of Babylon. The reconstruction would be under the general supervision of Saddam Hussein, who made his appearance in 1969 as the Iraqi strongman by hanging eight Jews on the streets of Baghdad as a warning for others to hit-the-road elsewhere. In 1978, I led a Southwest Radio Church tour of 103 to Iraq. One of the sites we visited was Babylon. There was a four-lane highway between Baghdad and Babylon with brick factories along the way turning out bricks for this tremendous reconstruction project. On one end of the brick was the name Nebuchadnezzar, and on the other end was the name Saddam Hussein who, then and now, envisions himself as a modern Nebuchadnezzar to restore the glory that was once Babylon's.
"In spite of the 10-year suicidal war with Iran which began in 1980, Hussein continued the restoration project. In 1987 the rebuilding of the temples, the palaces, and the gardens had proceeded to a point where a month's Babylonian festival was set to declare to the world that Babylon had been restored to its former glory, and a new Nebuchadnezzar has been resurrected, or at least his spirit now lived in Saddam Hussein.
"...In any event, the long war with Iran left Hussein short of funds to complete the rebuilding process, so in 1990 he invaded oil rich Kuwait...
"President Bush based his hopes on a combined alliance of nations to stop Saddam Hussein. He announced on an international television network on September 11, 1990: A new partnership of nations has emerged...Out of these troubled times, a New World Order can emerge...
"Babylon will be destroyed in an overwhelming judgment of fire, but it will be in the Tribulation, which may be near, but not now. This is why we see Saddam Hussein continuing to be such a problem today, and also why it defies reason, human or inhuman, as to why the job was not completed in 1991. Now why would, from a New World Order viewpoint, this reconstructed city be destroyed, perhaps by an H-bomb?
"A news report from Jerusalem titled 'Saddam Hiding Bio-Weapons Under Babylon?' dated March 9,1998, is interestingly related to our subject: German newspapers this week published new disclosures on Iraq's military capabilities. The Daily Bild reported that Saddam Hussein has hidden a large supply of nerve gas and biological weapons beneath the ruins of ancient Babylon, on the assumption that the United States would not dare to bomb the archaeological and historical site...
"The biblical scenario in Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 50-52 specifically state that God uses the nations to bring judgment against Babylon. Could Israel, the United States, or some other nation drop nuclear bombs and missiles on Babylon if it meant saving other nations? Yes! Would this fulfill the biblical prophecy that Babylon will be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah? Yes!" - 480
"This 'battle of the New World Order was some kind of manufactured crisis with a hidden agenda,' wrote conspiracy researchers Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen after careful study of the events leading to this conflict.
"Bush and Saddam Hussein had had a close relationship for many years. In his role as CIA director, and later as vice president, George Bush had supported Saddam through his eight-year war against Iran following the ouster of the Shah in 1979.
"Kuwait had been carved out of Iraq by Britain, who in 1899 took control of Kuwait's foreign policy under an agreement with the dictatorial Sabah family.
"Economist Paul Adler noted, 'It was known that David Rockefeller met with the Iraqi leader on at least three known occasions after the Chase Manhattan consortium became the lead banker in a number of major Iraqi credit syndications.' It was also reported that Alan Stoga, a vice president of (Henry) Kissinger Associates met with Iraqi leaders during a two-year period preceding the Gulf conflict.
"Following the money trail of such nondiplomatic contacts which led to the Gulf War, Congressman Henry Gonzalez, chairman of the House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, discovered that almost $5 billion in loans had been passed to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s through the Atlanta, Georgia, branch of Italy's government-owned bank, Banca Nazional del Lavoro (BNL). The branch manager, Christopher Drogoul, was finally brought into federal court, where he pleaded guilty to approving this huge cash transfer without the approval of BNL's head office in Italy. However, the whole investigation was put on hold during the Gulf War.
"Most observers disbelieved that Drogoul could have conducted such a massive transaction without the knowledge of his superiors. Bobby Lee Cook, one of Drogoul's several defense attorneys, argued that his client had been made the patsy in 'a scheme orchestrated at the highest levels of the U.S. Government.'
"In court, BNI, official Franz von Wedel testified that his boss Drogoul had acted on the advice of the bank's consultants, Kissinger Associates.
"In both 1989 and 1990, the Bush Justice Department had quashed indictments against the BNI, by the Atlanta Attorney General's office following an FBI raid on the bank on August 4, 1989. Action against the bank managers was held up for more than a year. Indictments were finally handed down one day after Bush declared a cease-fire in the Gulf War.
"This scandal--dubbed 'Iraqgate'--prompted Gonzaelz to prepare a House resolution calling for the impeachment of Bush Attorney General William Barr for 'obstruction of justice in the BNI scandal.' House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks called on Barr to appoint a special prosecutor in the case. In a classic case of who-will-watch-the-watchers?, Barr said he could find no evidence of wrongdoing on his part and refused to appoint a special prosecutor. It was one of the only times that an attorney general had failed to appoint a special prosecutor when asked to do so by Congress." - 482:118

"In 1974, [George] Weisz, as head of the foreign intelligence staff [of the CIA] had learned that a new and closer relationship on nuclear matters was developing between the French and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Iraquis were offering the French tens of millions of dollars and contracts in exchange for nuclear technology, starting with the 70-megawatt commercial atomic reactor and a smaller research reactor. The Iraquis named the project Tammuz, after a Canaanite god and the month in the Arabic calendar when Saddam Hussein's Baath party took power in 1968." - 483:418-19

"While the O.J. Simpson trial gobbled up endless TV hours and countless news pages, a concurrent criminal trial in Miami went almost unnoticed by the national media, even though it called into question the judgment of three U.S. presidents.
"President Clinton's Justice Department had put on trial Teledyne Industries, a major military contractor, and two of its mid-level employees, on charges of selling cluster-bomb parts to a Chilean arms manufacturer, Carlos Cardoen. Cardoen, in turn, allegedly shipped finished bombs to Iraq.
"Defense attorneys for the Teledyne employees argued that the CIA, as part of a secret operation that has come to be known as 'Iraqgate,' had authorized the shipments--a claim that the Reagan/Bush administration had long denied. Since taking office in 1993, the Clinton team has continued that GOP position, stating as recently as Jan. 16 that the administration 'did not find evidence that U.S. agencies or officials illegally armed Iraq.'
"But on Jan. 31, this bipartisan dike finally sprang a leak. Howard Teicher, who served on Reagan's National Security Council staff, offered an affidavit in the Teledyne case that declared that CIA director William J. Casey and his deputy, Robert M. Gates, 'authorized, approved and assisted' delivery of cluster bombs to Iraq through Cardoen (In These Times, 3/6/95).
"Teicher also described a still-secret National Security Decision Directive signed by President Reagan in June 1982 that set forth a U.S. policy of preventing Iraq from losing its war with Iran. 'CIA Director Casey personally spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war,' Teicher stated." 484

"The world's worst banking scandal, inflicting huge financial losses on thousands of people worldwide, surfaced in the media in 1991. This was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)...
"BCCI was a private bank operating in over seventy countries, including the United States. At one time BCCI had over 400 branches in 78 countries, and assets of over $20 billion. Its holding company was based in Luxembourg and its principal operation in London. The primary bank supervisor for BCCI was Luxembourg Monetary Institute, the central bank of Luxembourg.
"The BCCI scandal was related to other criminal activities, including BNL; Iraqgate; Iran and its Contra cousin; and others. BCCI and BNL both played a role in the Iraqi armament buildup, in which funds provided by U.S. taxpayers were forwarded by the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. There were numerous cross-dealings between the banks. BCCI used its international connections to fund loans to BNL, which funded the Iraqi weapon buildups, which then required the U.S. taxpayer to fund much of the Persian Gulf War." - 485

PROPAGANDA/PRETEXT
"The interpretation of this chapter (Rev. 18) depends on the question whether Babylon will be rebuilt as the capital of the world in the end time... Accordingly, the approach taken here is to anticipate Babylon as a city that will be rebuilt as the capital of the final world empire and will be destroyed physically as well as politically at time of the Second Coming. This conclusion is based on studies in the Old Testament concerning the prophecies there of the destruction of Babylon... (Is. 13:5-6, 10, 19-22; 14:1-6, 22, 25-26; Jer. 51). These prophecies anticipating the second destruction of Babylon were not fulfilled in history." - 464:611
"Nor is Antichrist unknown to Mohammedan theology... He is to be one-eyed and marked on the forehead with the letters C.F.R., i.e., CAFIR or infidel... He will be slain by Jesus at the gate of Lud near Joppa, assisted by the Imam Mahedi, after which the Moslem will coalesce with the Christian into one." - 481:126

See: logo of First Horseman of the Apocalypse on Council on Foreign Relations' magazine, Foreign Affairs.

Ewen MacAskill in Babylon
Saturday May 4, 2002
The Guardian

Iraq urges Germany today to return chunks of Babylon shipped to Berlin at the beginning of the last century in a heritage seizure which makes Britain's removal of the Parthenon Marbles look tame.
When Britain took the marbles from Athens, at least it left the Acropolis behind. The German archaeologists who excavated the Babylon site had no such scruples.

An entire tower, the Ishtar Gate, was lifted and taken to a museum in Berlin, where it remains today. Standing on the tower's original site, Mohammed Aziz Selman al-Ibrahim, an archaeologist and official of the antiquities and heritage department of Iraq's ministry of culture, called for its return.

"I have anger, but what can we do?" he said. "Just, I appeal to the German government to give back our antiquities to Iraq."

Behind him, diggers and trucks were working on the excavation of another part of the Babylon site.

The Pergamon Museum in Berlin describes the Ishtar Gate on its website as "one of the major attractions" on display. A spokesman refused to comment on the Iraqi appeal yesterday.

Today a huge portrait of Saddam Hussein stands at the entrance to the Babylon site, 56 miles south of Baghdad. He has left his own mark at Babylon, building a presidential palace a few hundred metres from the site, in the same style as the original.

German archaeologists worked at the site for 20 years, until the outbreak of the first world war. They took with them many treasures, including most of the friezes, each depicting a golden lion, which lined Babylon's Procession Street. There were 120 of them, 60 on each side. The Germans took 118.

The French took a share of Babylon's treasures to the Louvre and the British helped themselves between the wars, when Iraq was a British protectorate. Mr Ibrahim said the British adventurer and writer Gertrude Bell "filled two ships with goods she stole from here". He said they remained in the British Museum.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the seven wonders of the world. The city reached its peak during the empire of Nebuchadnezzar the Second in 604-562BC. When the Euphrates shifted nine miles to the west, the population went with it, and Babylon fell into ruin.

President Saddam's palace sits on a hill overlooking the great throne room of Nebuchadnezzar's palace.

But United Nations weapons inspectors, hunting for biological and chemical weapons between 1991 and 1998 claimed it might have another use: to hide an arsenal of banned weapons.

If the negotiations between Iraq and the UN reach a successful compromise in New York, the weapons inspectors will soon be back in Iraq, but could again come up against the problem of getting into to palaces such as this.

The presidential palace is not the only change made to the Babylon landscape. To protests from Unesco, which has responsibility for world heritage sites, President Saddam's department of antiquities and heritage decided to make up for the bareness of the site by building brick walls in 1987 on the original foundations, to provide an idea of what Babylon may have looked like.

Visitors have mixed opinions about the results, some dismissing the work carried as the "Disneyfication" of archaeology. The return of the Ishtar Gate might encourage Iraq to remove the recent work. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,709809,00.html