[kalt]

This seems unfortunate.

[JoeSchem]

We had a sound overall strategy, but apparently we're missing on a few cylinders below the Tommy Franks level. I place this political blunder alongside the failure to immediately implement remote-controlled, suicide-bomber-proof checkpoints.

[Vets_Husband_and_Wife]

We are both with you.. this is very unfortunate.

The responsibility rests with the Iraqi's who stole these treasures. But they won't be sold easily. I'm sure there are pictures of what was there, and any attempt worldwide to sell them will be thwarted.

Kind of like the Rembrandts that are missing. The people who stole them, will never profit from them. Not in this life.

Perhaps, God willing, they will be returned.

One can only hope.

I cannot blame our troops, they have had more important things on thier plates. But it is unfortunate.

[cake_crumb]

It disgusts me that Iraqis looted treasures of their heritage.

It dusgusts me further that they would blame US troops for not protecting that heritage. There are still firfights and attempted homocide bombings going on. The Marines can't be everywhere at once.

What happened to all that great rhetoric about how citizens of Iraq are IRAQIS before anything else?? If that crap were true, there would have been no need to protect the heritage of the Iraqi people.

The blame lies with the looters, not with the Marines, who are still sheeding blood to free the Iraqi people.

[eleni121]

It seems unfortunate but it is really nothing more and nothing less than what has been repeated many many times in the course of history. In fact. museums are guilty of obtaining, housing and exploiting art which has been looted/sold illegally, etc. The Aztec masks (of Mexico)reside in Vienna. The Parthenon Marbles are in London and on it goes.

The ownership of many priceless artwork has become questionable because of how each was acquired. Some were gotten through outright theft, others were the spoils of war. IN this case the "acquisition" is a result of the repression and its resultant anger by the inhabitants of the region where the art was originally created. Now to what extent the inhabitants today are related to those who created the works I don't know. The main point is that eventually, the art/artifacts will find their way into the hands of buyers and at that point it is up to legal authorities to determine how it is returned.

[PayrollOffice]

"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."

Translation: My Government check is late!

[Torie]

This ransacking of Iraq's premier museum of antiquities is a stain on the US war operation. Many objects from the cradle of civilization will probably be lost to mankind forever. This tragedy should not have been allowed to happen. No one will convince me otherwise. Don't bother. I am very annoyed, and frankly pissed. Someone dropped the ball.

[need_a_screen_name]

Any truth to the claim that the museum was seen by the Iraqis to be strongly related to the Baathist regime, so its pillaging was like ransacking one of Saddam's palaces??

That is what I heard on another forum.

[Constitution Day]

More than unfortunate, this is terrible if it's true.

I've actually been wondering about the museum there lately.
My current reading includes Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux.

[the_rightside]

Sounds like she has been coached by Jesse Jackson.

[RightWhale]

This seems unfortunate.

The items will be found and the Ali Babas prosecuted. Iraq may use this as a centerpiece for their governmental reorganization. Rightly so.

[Natural Law]

I believe that the antiquities are probably safer in the hands of black marketeers than in the hands of the Ba'athists or UN. Anything of value in an impoverished country will eventually surface.

[Slyfox]

Looters Ransack Baghdad's Antiquities Museum

As if Saddam hadn't already done it.

[arielb]

"Americans are occupiers! Go home! No wait! We need you to protect our museums!"

[Hermann the Cherusker]

How true is this story? The Looters smashed 170,000 items in a day and broke into bank vault like rooms? I think not.

Smells of an inside job!

[Constitution Day]

Ping.

[Kay Soze]

After just one hour of research here's what I have found on the "looting" :

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The main entrance to Baghdad's antiquities museum is firmly shut, sandbags are stacked up near the gates, and priceless treasures have been spirited away for safe keeping.
Every moveable piece was packed up in crates a week ago and removed from the museum, he added.
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:d9AfWlwiYW4C:asia.news.yahoo.com/030312/3/tjtf.html+%22donny+george%22+baghdad&hl=en&ie=UTF-8


“The experts, which included Iraqi art officials, said some of the most valuable pieces had been placed in the vault of the national bank after the 1991 Gulf War, but they had no information on whether the items were still there.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2575224,00.html


"Most of the things were removed. We knew a war was coming, so it was our duty to protect everything," Mr. George said. "We thought there would be some sort of bombing at the museum. We never thought it could be looted." http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105053292455773900,00.html

“Officials at the UNESCO meeting at its headquarters in Paris said the information was still too sketchy to determine exactly what was missing and how many items were unaccounted for.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2575224,00.html

Some believe that individuals, including government employees, are taking the best pieces out overland through Jordan
Hamdoon said that many pieces had disappeared from provincial Iraqi museums after the war.
http://www.usfca.edu/~trembath/www-class/iraq-antiquities.html

Some of the objects on display here are reproductions, with their originals removed by conquering nations to be displayed in foreign museums. The Louvre in Paris, London's British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum in the US all contain antiquities from ancient Mesopotamia. Some pieces have been returned, but the effective closure of the country seems to preclude any further returns for the foreseeable future. http://www.arab.net/iraq/iq_baghdadsights.htm
Sensing the treasures could be in peril, museum curators secretly removed antiquities from their display cases before the war and placed them in storage vaults - but to no avail. The doors of the vaults were opened or smashed, and everything inside was taken, museum workers said.

That led one museum employee to suspect that people familiar with the museum may have participated in the theft.

``The fact that the vaults were opened suggests employees of the museum may have been involved,'' said the staffer, who declined to be identified. ``To ordinary people, these are just stones. Only the educated know the value of these pieces.''
http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6281650%255E25777,00.html

The museum's most famous holding may have been tablets with Hammurabi's Code - one of mankind's earliest codes of law.
It could not be determined whether the tablets were at the museum when the war broke out.
http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6281650%255E25777,00.html

In one possibly encouraging sign, several people in the Al Awi neighborhood that surrounds the museum said they did not see looters leave with any antiquities, even amid gun battles and looting that lasted two days.
But he said the only items from the collection he saw stolen were several old rifles. Mostly, he said, he saw looters take chairs, typewriters, ceiling lamp fixtures and other items from the museum's offices, as happened at nearly every other government office in the capital.

Abed El Rahman, a museum security guard who lives on the premises, also said that rifles were the only items he saw stolen from the collections. "But many people were carrying boxes," he said. "I don't know what was in the boxes."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/17/international/worldspecial/17MUSE.html