THE SITE OF BABYLON was the subject of a 30-minute program on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday:

The Battle for Babylon
Sunday 11 June 2006 13:30-14:00 (Radio 4 FM)

The site of the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon lies only about 70km south of Baghdad where recent events have created a threat to its survival. Used as a base camp by military forces, there are reports of serious damage to the archaeological remains.

Jonathan Charles attempts to make the dangerous journey to find out what has happened to Babylon.

At the moment you can still listen to it online, but it won't be there permanently, so don't dawdle if you're interested.

Although Charles doesn't make it to the site, one of his colleagues get to the adjacent village and we get to hear people grumble because they can't hold wedding parties on the archaeological site anymore.

More seriously, the accusations that the US Army behaved irresponsibly while occupying the site are treated at some length and an Army representative replies to them. Basically he says that (1) the damage by looters would have been far worse if they hadn't occupied the site and (2) all the activities (e.g., filling sandbags with debris) were done in consultation with antiquity authorities (it's not clear to me who exactly they were). The program also deals with the importance of the site for history and the damage done to it by Saddam.

Not to wear the point out but, as in the post below, wouldn't it have been more constructive to have had regular (daily or more frequent) helicopter flyovers of the site, from which vantage the army could have doused the looters with refined putrescine water-balloons or aerosol? It would not do any permanent harm to the looters or the site, but it makes a horrific stench and would make looting a highly undesirable occupation and probably also would make looters easy to identify for the next day or two. I'm quite serious, and would like to know if there is some reason this wouldn't work. The problem of the looting of archaeological sites is a massive international one and it seems to me that it calls for a little thinking outside the box.

(Via Chuck Jones on the IraqCrisis list.)