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BAGHDAD -- Saddam Hussein used to hold the Babylon Festival at the end of Iraq's sweltering summers on the site of the ancient ruins of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, an hour's drive south of the capital. It was agitprop, an annual expression of megalomania and, until the last one in fall 2002, with war already in the air, a forum for railing against the United States. This year the Ministry of Culture decided to revive the festival over three days that ended on Monday. The organizers, supported by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, envisioned a celebration of a new democratic Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of dictatorship and disrepair, Iraq is celebrating its renewed sovereignty over the Babylon archaeological site -- by fighting over the place, over its past and future and, of course, over its spoils. Time long ago eroded the sun-dried bricks that shaped ancient Babylon, the city of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, where Daniel read the writing on the wall and Alexander the Great died. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BAGHDAD -- The shipment of laptop computers that arrived in Iraq's main seaport in February was a small but important part of the American military's mission here to win hearts and minds. What happened afterward is a tale of good intentions mugged by Iraq's reality. The computers -- 8,080 in all, worth $1.8 million -- were bought for schoolchildren in Babil, modern-day Babylon, a gift of the American taxpayers. Only they became mired for months in customs at the port, Umm Qasr, stalled by bureaucracy or venality, or some combination of the two. And then they were gone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]