Iraq War's Environmental Impact

I found this interesting article from just before the Iraq War, in January 2003 in "THE GUARDIAN". (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/19/iraq5)It talked about the possible effects of a new Iraq war, if it happened...which it did (obviously).
It talked about the effect that the First Gulf War had on the environment but also on civilians and it makes some assumptions about the latest war.

Another article was from 2005, from BBC, talking about the impact that the war had on the environment of Iraq. It mentions some of the things from the previous article and it projects that costs for decontamination of Iraq would be around $40 million.
This is very interesting, since I found a bunch of random facts about the war on this site where it states how much pollution the war has caused so far (in carbon emissions) and how much money has been poured into it.

It is really amazing and truly fascinating to think that the U.S. would rather waste so much money by attacking a nation and then trying to rebuild it, instead of providing that money for stopping the current global warming trends, or spending more money on the war in Iraq than the whole world spends in order to stop global warming. I'm just overwhelmed by the information... I am not sure how accurate they are, or how accurate they can even be, but still.... even if it's somewhere near that, it's ridiculous.

article from NY Times

This is completely irrelevant to this week's topic but I thought it was pretty interesting. you may have to sign up to be a member of NY Times to read the whole article but it is free.


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