Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure

New York Times ^ | April 12, 2003 | JOHN F. BURNS

[ChadGore]

Re: This is serious

This is sirius

[mrebel2k]

From the footage on Fox, it truly looked like a location that had been looted. Not an inside job. **
OH! just now they are showing a zoo that has been discovered -the animals are starving!! They're feeding them MRE's. * * Okay, back to the subject at hand- this was a fear going into the country that world history locations could be destroyed, as well as the artifacts they contain. Not sure that it could have been prevented. The damage is done now. *&^

[sauropod]

Yup. Its our fault. The whole thing. < /sarcasm>

If the DAmned museum was so concerned, they could have moved the stuff someplace else. I am sure everybody there saw what was coming.

[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.

[agincourt1415]

CNN had a WINER on TV a few minutes ago talking about the loss of thousands of years of historical Items.

Please Liberal Whiners GIVE US A BREAK!

LIBERAL WHINERS DESPERATE to find something wrong.

[need_a_screen_name]

Thanks. Was there any mention of the museum's ties to the Baathist regime?

[Barnacle]

This is sirius

And, even more Sirius!

[agincourt1415]

Mentioning the connection of the Baath Party of course not.

CNN is DEAD in the WATER.

[The Old Hoosier]

Acting quite bravely, eh?

[The Old Hoosier]

We didn't start looting shops when the Brits left, that's for sure. These people are truly uncivilized--going so far as to tell our troops that a shopkeeper was a Fedayeen so that they could loot his shop.

[syriacus]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of the valuables were probably stolen by the museum staff and directors, and they're using the looters to deflect blame

I agree. The staff were probably intelligent enough to see the "handwriting appearing on the wall", over the past few months or weeks.

After all, they are students of history and have read about changes in regimes.

I'd bet some precious items were moved when the bombing began three weeks ago, if not before.

[muawiyah]

A very critical paragraph in a current article said it all:

"A full accounting of what has been lost may take weeks or months. The museum had been closed during much of the 1990's, and as with many Iraqi institutions, its operations were cloaked in secrecy under Mr. Hussein." (SEE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/international/worldspecial/13BAGH.html?ex=1050811200&en=38ca7bff5498a8f3&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE)

In short, the staff had YEARS, not days or weeks, to loot this museum. Some of those supposed staffers might well have been seeing the museum for the first time in a long time.

[syriacus]

The museum had been closed during much of the 1990's, and as with many Iraqi institutions, its operations were cloaked in secrecy under Mr. Hussein

Thanks for pointing out this quote, muawiyah.

The looting might have been "allowed" to happen... in order to cover up what had happened to the collection in the previous months.

Similar to the way a robber sets fire to a site he has stolen from, with hopes of destroying the evidence.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Bob]

What’s your point in resurrecting a thread this old?