U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Allen Al-Amreeki, a 3-year-old Iraqi burn victim, is assisted before he was flown last Wednesday to the United States. image:38980:3::0

The Times Online:

Mr Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland. “The people need this kind of positive influence. It’s going to have a huge psychological impact,” Mr Werner said.

…In the years that followed (the war), the zoo and the surrounding al-Zawra park became an occasional target for insurgent attacks. But in recent months, families have begun to return cautiously for weekend picnics. Renovations have already begun on the zoo, with cages being repainted and new animals arriving, including ostriches, bears and a lion.

You’ve got to like the idea, even if this could be an ideological target as well as a natural place for Al Qaeda and other social workers to practice making headlines. A fun park, among all this stern more-Islamic-than-thou-ing, could only be seen as decadent.

Imagine a place where Iraqi kids could play, without even having the opportunity to get blown up.

Living like normal children, and their parents not being murdered on principle.

Not even getting maimed for life by some altruistic do-gooder.

Where would it all end?

Iraq could become a place worth living in, despite politicians, terrorists, arms dealers, religious psychotics, and contractors.

What a bizarre idea.

However, the world’s first fun park in a war zone is apparently coming along quite nicely. The skateboard park is scheduled to open in July, with 200,000 American skateboards being shipped over.

(See, there’s another ideological flaw. They should be using carefully ironed camels.)

The larger entertainment park, designed by Ride and Show Engineering Inc, will follow in phases, part of a strategy launched two years ago by the Iraqi Government and the US to attract private investment into the country’s 192 state-owned factories.

The factories were closed in 2003 by Paul Bremer, then the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, who believed that private enterprise would take their place. Instead, industries withered and half a million skilled workers were left jobless.

Which of course puts in perspective the rapid return of Iraq to its present state of truly stunning economic efficiency. Keep half a million people out of work and the traffic flows so much more smoothly and the car bombs can operate normally.

Times readers aren’t impressed, but I am. Of course the Iraqis need water and electricity, they should have had it years ago. But the kids need fun, and the people need lives.