March 27, 2006 [LINK]
As the violence in Iraq escalates almost every day, even those of us who believe in the cause and have strong hope in ultimate success are prone to having second thoughts. Whenever I come across some vicious anti-Bush screed in the op-ed pages, however, I am inclined to refresh my memory on all of the good things that the liberation of Iraq has brought about. For us nature lovers, high on that list would be the restoration the marshlands of southern Iraq that Saddam Hussein had deliberately drained so as to flush out and eliminate opposition by the largely Shiite Marsh Arabs. In the last two years, the lower stretches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have become a true "Eden Again." For the full story, see Iraq Foundation. If you ask me, anyone who sincerely believes in protecting the environment and conserving wildlife should have been strongly in favor of removing Saddam Hussein from power. He was the one who ordered that all of the oil wells in Kuwait be torched when his army was defeated there in 1991. How anyone could argue that we should have left such a dictator alone is beyond me.