"If you have the chance, Austin, make sure you visit Babylon," an Iraqi-American friend told me a month before I left the States for military duty in Baghdad. "We," he said, meaning Iraq and Iraqis, "have so much history."

We -- my friend and I -- were drinking coffee in a bookstore. I had a newspaper at my elbow. He'd brought a map of Baghdad, to show me the neighborhood where he'd lived years ago, should I have the opportunity (helmet, flak jacket, escort of armored vehicles) to drive around the city and have a look.

"Well, you can make a case that Iraq, as Mesopotamia, is the source of history, at least Western history," I replied. "I mean, as in recorded history? Literacy? Records on clay tablets recording goat and sheep trades kept by Mesopotamian city states?" I tapped the newspaper -- which, given the war, featured a headline reporting a string of terror bombings in and around Baghdad.

"Sumer and Ur, home of Abraham ... Ninevah ... Mesopotamia -- perhaps the southern marshes -- as the source of the Agricultural Revolution? ... Alexander at Gaugamela ..."

Covering five or six millennia in a conversation over coffee is impossible, but with Iraqi history as the topic, that's roughly the time span available for comment and speculation -- and we gave it a go, fully aware I'd soon join yet another army operating in history's cradle.

Then he said: "Iraq should not make money by only selling oil. Agricultural Revolution? We grow food. We've water. And the country should be filled with tourists. There is so much to see, so much history. I have always wanted to own a hotel in Babylon. Maybe, you think, in 10 years?" Continued...