The Baghdad zoo's booze-swilling bears and laser-enhanced fish | WikiLeaked

The near-total destruction of Baghdad's city zoo over the course of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was, in retrospect, a grim portent of the poor planning and disastrous mismanagement that would characterize the early years of the Iraq war. The zoo had been the largest in the Middle East before the invasion, with more than 650 animals; eight days after coalition troops arrived in the city, however, all but 35 were dead. "All the Americans would've had to do is drop off 50 men, with a few vets and a truckload of food, and they wouldn't have lost any of the animals," Lawrence Anthony, a South Africa conservationist who salvaged what was left of the zoo after the invasion, told me last year

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Lunch at the Baghdad Zoo

Lunch at the Baghdad Zoo

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pollyann/2877905091/

This video is disturbing and I am not posting it here out of any glorification of gore but because it disgusts me. If this really is in Baghdad Zoo, and judging by the background chatter it is, then I find it extremely disappointing. I understand that the West has played a none too small part in contributing to the zoos revival.

Live feeding of carnivores if not done as part of a re-wilding programme does absolutely nothing other than to pander to the wishes of the ignorant and uneducated. It is neither clever nor necessary. Humane slaughter can be done in under a minute. Admittedly these unfortunate creatures probably died very quickly and without knowing what hit them. The thing that disturbs me most was that this was done for the enjoyment of the public...and they obviously enjoyed it.

It does not take an expert in animal behaviour to note that this performance was not a 'one off' but part of a regular show. As I said in the beginning. It disgusts me!


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