[geek][politics] Some positive news from Iraq

...however small (and perhaps fleeting): the marshes of the Mesopotamian valley are recovering.

MSNBC staff and news service reports Updated: 4:13 p.m. ET Aug. 24, 2005 TOKYO - A decade after Saddam Hussein had them drained to punish their occupants, the marshlands of southern Iraq, said to be the inspiration for the biblical Garden of Eden, are recovering at a “phenomenal rate” since Saddam's fall, the United Nations said Wednesday. New satellite imagery shows a rapid increase in water and vegetation cover in just the past three years, with the marshes rebounding to about 37 percent of the area they covered in 1970, up from about 10 percent in 2002, the United Nations Environment Program said in a report describing a multimillion dollar restoration project funded by Japan.

Cool. And definitely better than the 'progress' on the Iraqi Constitution...