Images of Environmental Damage in Iraq/Kuwait War

After the readings, it became clear to me that Saudi Arabia has been spared the costly wars prevalent throughout the rest of the Middle East because of American protection. This is not to say that American protection necessarily benefitted Saudi Arabia, but the U.S. military proved no match for the Iraqi army. However, had the United States not been involved, it is very likely that Saudi Arabia would have been attacked by Iraq as well. The close proximity of Saudi Arabian oil fields to Kuwait meant that the damage from the fire that Saddam set in Kuwait oil fields did travel to Saudi Arabia. Since the environmental effects of this have already been discussed in the previous posts, such as the effect on the birds, I thought that I would post some visual representations of the fires themselves. Here is a video I found that shows the fires and briefly explains how they began:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DoxBG5zdxg&feature=related

This video is a broadcast from CNN on the first day of the Iraqi invasion into Kuwait. The amount of tanks and helicopters is pretty astonishing, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think about how much pollution they are probably causing. Plus, this is only the Iraqi troops; I’m sure U.S. troops considerably polluted the area as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oybdr9rzMKM&feature=related

Also, although this doesn’t have anything to do with our topic, I watched the Documentary Web of Deceit on YouTube. It does a really good job explaining what our readings went over this week, but the addition of images make it so much more real (at least for me). If your search “Web of Deceit” on youtube, you can find it installed in parts.

Video I saw on the deserts

Here is a link to a CNN piece on the efforts of a Saudi prince to protect the deserts. I wasn't able to get the embed codes to work, but the link should get you there.

Inside The Middle East in Egypt Part 03 7:00 updated Tue, April 10, 2007
Prince Khalid Faisal Turki al Saud, a Saudi government advisor tells us about the danger to the deserts of Saudi Arabia

So after numerous searches for "Saudi Arabia" environmental impacts I was unable to find something that exactly fit this criteria, although I did find this article which I find pretty interesting.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1744489.ece

The article is about how Saudi Arabia and Egypt were planning on creating a 15 mile long bridge across the Strait of Tiran directly linking Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Not only would there be significant environmental impacts on the sea, there would also be problems with Israel. Currently there is no direct land route between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Israel is in the way. This bridge would have allowed for automobile access between the two countries (and continents). Israel had considerable problems with this bridge as it would have possibly impeded their access to the Gulf of Aqaba and beyond. If it had been constructed, it could have drastically changed the Middle East for those who lived there. Egypt recognizes Israel as a state while Saudi Arabia does not, so having an increasing amount of interactions between people of these two states could result in some changes occurring.