Posted on 04/12/2003 7:05:07 AM PDT by kalt
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Looters have sacked Baghdad's antiquities museum, plundering treasures dating back thousands of years to the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia, museum staff said on Saturday.
They blamed U.S. troops for not protecting the treasures.
Surveying the littered glass wreckage of display cases and pottery shards at the Iraqi National Museum on Saturday, deputy director Nabhal Amin wept and told Reuters: "They have looted or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years...They were worth billions of dollars."
She blamed U.S. troops, who have controlled Baghdad since the collapse of President Saddam Hussein's rule on Wednesday, for failing to heed appeals from museum staff to protect it from looters who moved in to the building on Friday.
"The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened," she said. "I hold the American troops responsible for what happened to this museum."
The looters broke into rooms that were built like bank vaults with huge steel doors. The museum grounds were full of smashed doors, windows and littered with office paperwork and books.
"We know people are hungry but what are they going to do with these antiquities," said Muhsen Kadhim, a museum guard for the last 30 years but who said he was overwhelmed by the number of looters.
"As soon as I saw the American troops near the museum, I asked them to protect it but the second day looters came and robbed or destroyed all the antiquities," he said.
ARMED GUARDS
Amin told four of the museum guards to carry guns and protect what remained.
Some of the museum's artifacts had been moved into storage to avoid a repeat of damage to other antiquities during the 1991 Gulf War.
It houses items from ancient Babylon and Nineveh, Sumerian statues, Assyrian reliefs and 5,000-year-old tablets bearing some of the earliest known writing. There are also gold and silver helmets and cups from the Ur cemetery.
The museum was only opened to the public six months ago after shutting down at the beginning of the 1991 Gulf War. It survived air strikes on Baghdad in 1991 and again was almost unscathed by attacks on the capital by U.S.-led forces.
Iraq, a cradle of civilization long before the empires of Egypt, Greece or Rome, was home to dynasties that created agriculture and writing and built the cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Babylon -- site of Nebuchadnezzar's Hanging Gardens.
Shove it up your arse... our troops have more important things to do.
Antiquarians already seemed concerned that the coalition would destroy the museum's collection during this war.
Shouldn't the items already have been protected from potential war-related destruction? They had three weeks to do something.
It seems that the museum directors trusted the Americans would not bomb the building during all the nightime raids on Baghdad. It looks like some Iraqis could not be trusted.
In an Albert Speer kind of way.
I wouldn't even go that far. They were ostentatious and culturally irrelevant. But the Museum was not. As I said before, though, I'd like to hear our side of the story before reaching any conclusions about the fate of the Museum and its artifacts.
The main problem in Baghdad at the moment seems to be that the police force has simply vanished--for the good reason that they had been part of Saddam's terror regime and feared reprisals from the citizens.
By the way, when are the French going to return the stele with Hammurabi's Law Code to Sippar? (It was carried away to Susa in antiquity, then stolen in 1901 by the French and taken to Paris.)
Well, you read at the end that that there were items in storage due to the dangers of war. Hopefully and presumably these were the most important items.
Of course the criminals are the looters, not us, but it is still, as said above, unfortunate. If there are one or two other museums like this in the country, or if there are parts of this museum they didn't get to, I would think each museum would be worth, if not a tank, at least a Bradley.
The political left can tolerate Saddam's torture chambers, rape rooms, genocide, living in palaces with gold toilets while he forces the majority of his people to live in slums worse than Calcutta and Haiti, but the liberals will scream bloody murder now that a bunch of old vases have been stolen by the starving masses.
Her world has not revolved around George Bush until very recently. I think everyone should just for a second realize that winning this war was easy, but that doesn't mean all of Iraq now immediately has unshakeable faith in this president. We didn't protect her stuff. On the micro scale she sees in, she is right. We didn't share her priority. I am sorry for her loss. I don't expect her to give a 'support Bush' speech yet.
Right--and I was agreeing, but distinguishing the Museum.
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