Yes. The criminal acts of Saddam with regards to these marshes have been known for some time in environmental circles.
And yet, and yet, they carried no protests to Baghdad. There is a hidden agenda here. Part of the reconstruction of Iraq will have to be diverted to restoring these marshlands, and failure to make this a primary goal will be made out to show that
Bush and his Administration do not care about the environment. Not that Saddam Hussein was the primary reason that the environment was degraded in the first place.
All things in their own good time. It is not clear why the environmentalists would want the symbol of early roots of the Old Testament restored, as this gives validity to religious zealots. As everybody knows, those people, you know, the fundamentalist Christians and the orthodox Jewish, would place greater emphasis on making the "Garden of Eden" a reality.
If the environmentalists knew this...why didn't they do something about it? Don't they even care? Or are they more concerned about George Bush to care what has happened here?