Factofile: Iraq
Population	About the same as France
Capital City	Baghdad
Area	About the size of France
Neighbors	Harry and Maureen Perkins
Main exports	Oil, moustaches
Climate	Similar to France
Religion	Tricky area
Currency	Dinar. $1 = ∞dinar (2003)
Official language	Rhetoric
Literacy	What?

The area of the world now known as Iraq is roughly equivalent to ancient Mesopotamia, or 'the cradle of civilization'. It is the place where Adam is thought to have given birth to Eve. The exact spot is now occupied by E Coli's Kebab Heaven.

How Did This First Civilization Take Root?
Nice use of metaphor, because the answer lies in the very fertile soil of the Euphrates basin, where the world's first farmers grew flowers for sale in the Sumerian fruit markets. Their secret? Written records: archaeologists have found the oldest surviving bookkeeping artifacts in this area. Each individual arabic numeral was chiseled into clay using bare fingernails. It is estimated that it took several generations to record one season's harvest of wheat. When the farmers realized they were getting behind with their books, all transactions were recorded using felt tip marker pens made from whicker bamboo imported from China.

Inevitably, business people used symbols instead of iconographic symbolisms, and the art of writing (using symbols) was born. You might be surprised at some other things invented by the Sumerians (early Iraqis): banking, agriculture, the wheel, murder, wax, gossip, the moon, furniture and, of course, Christianity.

Christians
In 3700BC the land was run by high priests known as Ziggurats, named after the ancient priests who used to hold sway over this part of the world. These Ziggurats worshipped the Sun God, bringer of harvests, to whom they sacrificed goats – you know, the usual thing. But in 4000BC the real God brought a great flood upon the lands, washing away everything except Noah's Ark. Containing every species of animal in the world, this Ark was the size of Jupiter, and displaced enough water to give an average American whore an enema fifty times over.

Muslims (Careful Now)
By the seventh century AD Muslims had conquered Persia, under the leadership of Al-Exander the Great. The whole country converted to Islam, invented tarmac, and due to strict religious doctrine, no-one had any fun at all.

Genghis Khan. This photo was probably taken by his mother. (Picture courtesy Charlie Drake)

In the sixth century BC a young horseman named Nebuchadnezzar rowed into Assyria in his boat. After a spell in the Civil Service, he married Princess Amytis and together they ruled over the land. They had a baby in 601BC, and to celebrate the fact they renamed the city Babylon. The legendary Hanging Gardens were designed by Nebuchadnezzar's mother-in-law, who thought their yard could do with some color.

Genghis Khan
In 1219 the nomadic Mongol people, who had been wandering around looking for trouble, discovered a tiny babe living in a whicker chair in the middle of the Arabian desert. Thinking him to be the son of Genghis Khan, they named him Genghis Khan (son of Khan) and killed him on the spot. Then they went on the rampage, killing every living thing.

The Ottoman Empire
Abu Said, a small Turkish entrepreneur, invented in 1550 a laundry box with a soft lid for sitting on. Thus was born a baghdad (literally, soft-topped towel container). The City went from extreme poverty to huge prosperity over the course of the next 400 years.

Saddam appears with his puppet alter-ego on Iraqi TV's popular A Mad Bastard Entertains.

The Rise of Saddam
After the First World War, the British Government, looking for something to do, invaded Iraq and destroyed Baghdad, rebuilding it in the shape of King George's bum. When Iran invaded in the early 1960s, the British hurriedly withdrew, leaving junior typist Saddam Hussein in charge of the radio. Using extraordinary diplomatic skills, he signed an agreement with the Shah of Iran, then went home and declared war once again. The Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years, killed four hundred million people, and only ended when UN resolution 598 declared 'I mean, really, this is getting rather silly now.'

Saddam Hussein's presidential palace. It is thought that weapons of mass destruction may be concealed here.

The Gulf War – 1990
In January 1989 Saddam Hussein was visited by April Glaspie, US Ambassador to Iraq. Glaspie informed him that if he wanted to invade Kuwait that would be "just fine and dandy." In August 1990 the Iraqi army overran the country, and in retaliation the US bombed Baghdad to oblivion and gassed half the British army.

Since then the attention of the World community was centered on finding and eliminating Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, having not kept the receipts from the original sales, could not be sure which weapons were stored in Iraq. So UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix was sent in on a fact-finding mission.

Bush before the press, defending his decision to spend an extra $2 billion in US schools. The money, he explained, will be diverted from the armed forces, which will be forced to take advertising from Burger King.

The Second Gulf War
Unfortunately, despite strenuous efforts by the US to keep WMD out of the hands of crazed war-mongers intent on destruction, they had to bomb the country and overthrow the regime.

Sadly, UN agreement for such action could not be reached, and it is now thought that the organization is an impotent talking-shop, ineffective in today's world.

Except when things get difficult afterwards.

A still from CNN's war footage. This camera was relaying live pictures from Saddam Hussein's rectum.

Winning the Peace
Who can forget the historic images sent by CNN anchor Barbararbra Leibowitz, embedded within the statue of Saddam Hussein, as it was toppled by the crazed heroic citizens of Baghdad? Very soon – some say within the next fifty years – ordinary Iraqis will have control of their own country once again, able to vote in democratic elections and work in burger chains and office cubicles like any other civilized peoples.

Meanwhile, the search for WMD goes on. In October 2003 a special CIA taskforce reported that an unsecured gas cylinder was found in a caravan off the Tigris road. "Left unattended," they warned, "this could have caused some nasty burns."

The lesson from history is clear.

The new map of Iraq showing sites of WMD discoveries.