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Article: Before military and economic damage, Baghdad was a mighty, modern capital.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- April 4, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Carol Rosenberg
After weeks of U.S.-led bombings, Iraqi-lit oil trenches and a decade of economic embargo decay, it may be hard to see Baghdad as the once-mighty, modern Arab capital that Saddam Hussein built.
U.S. troops now on the city's edge are likely to obliterate much of what is left of Baghdad's glory before they get to see it.
But Saddam presided over the creation of a sprawling, cosmopolitan 2,000-square-mile metropolis, which thanks to Iraq's 20th-century oil wealth, fused an austere Socialist-style Baath Party ideology with the fabled history that was the setting for the tales of "A Thousand and One Nights."
Today, ...