[FRgal4u]

how about telling Mr. Bush, thanks, you just help us to start a new chapter in our nation's history - democracy, rule by the people - instead of by emperors and thugs...

i feel sorry for their loss in national treasures, but they can't blame this all on us...we could have send in a JDAM from the skies and end it all, but we didn't...the looters are the irqis themselves...so shall we say, the iraqi people finally get back their own history, their processions from the ages??

[syriacus]

Mr. Muhammad, the archaeologist, directed much of his anger at President Bush. "A country's identity, its value and civilization resides in its history," he said. "If a country's civilization is looted, as ours has been here, its history ends.

I agree that this is very sad. But most of Iraq's people still have their lives and Iraq's history has not ended.

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[remitrom]

Who is looting, Armericans or Iraqis? Who are the thieves of anarchy, the liberators or the liberatered? Why not blame the Iraqis who are destroying their own heritage. Blame yourselves and your religion of peace, you savages.

[Barnacle]

AGHDAD, Iraq, April 12

This is serious indeed. They’ve even stripped a letter from the capitol city. ?;^)

[muawiyah]

Little was known of the ancient civilizations on exhibit in that Iraqi museum outside of the Bible and the Koran until about a century ago.

This was not "their civilization" - it was rather the common heritage of humanity. No doubt there's more in the ground to be dug up.

This experience demonstrates why antiquities should never be left in just the home country - as discovered they need to be spread around so that a single event can't destroy all of the materials.

The looters will probably take as good care of the antiquities as did the museum keepers - maybe better! All we have here is a change of ownership - not the destruction of the materials, and appropriate funding plus information from the catalogs will enable the exhibits to be put back together (in time).

[mrsmith]

"Pillagers"- at last the reporters are referring to the Baath Party accurately.

Or perhaps the reporters have never heard of a planned museum robbery.

[ambrose]

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 read elsewhere that most of the valuables were kept behind locked vaults.

[American Soldier]

Ancient history museums are by definition traffickers in stolen property. Now somebody else has stolen the stuff. Turnabout is fair play. Life will go on, the sun will come up tomorrow.

[Russian Sage]

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 like many Iraqi institutions, its operations were cloaked in secrecy under Mr. Hussein.

Hmmm.  Am I the only one to suspect that there might not have been much there when the looters arrived?

[Conservative4Ever]

Officials with crumpled spirits fought back tears and anger at American troops, as they ran down an inventory of the most storied items that they said had been carried away by the thousands of looters who poured into the museum after daybreak on Thursday and remained until dusk on Friday, with only one intervention by American troops, lasting about half an hour, at lunchtime on Thursday.

When did it become a job description of our military to protect Iraqi property? I thought Iraqi's were supposed to be taking their country back...that means to protect it too. It is a shame that the museum was ransacked, but h*ll, they have got to learn sometime to act responsibly.

Red

[Duramaximus]

Mr. Muhammad, the archaeologist, directed much of his anger at President Bush. "A country's identity, its value and civilization resides in its history," he said. "If a country's civilization is looted, as ours has been here, its history ends. Please tell this to President Bush. Please remind him that he promised to liberate the Iraqi people, but that this is not a liberation, this is a humiliation."

How about thanking CNN for their failure to report the events of the past. Events that if they had been reported would likely have led to the dethroning of Saddam years ago!

Now then, how about thanking the French, Germans, and Russians who supported the Saddam Hussein regime for decades. Their deceit and lies perpetuated the existence of Saddam's dictatorship, and his subsequent torture of the Iraqi people for years.

Mr. Muhammad, you self-righteous idiot, go stuff it up your ...! It is not our fault that "your people" looted "their treasures".

Another shining example of the New York Times trying to besmerch the shining successes of America's campaign to free the people of Iraq. Shameless commie-lib bastards!

[UncleSamUSA]

Don't worry, antiquities lovers, most of the good Sumerian and Assyrian artefacts have been in the British Museum in London for decades now.

Many others are in other European and American museums as well. Western archaeologists in the 19th and 20th centuries picked the place pretty dry, and not much was left "in situ". For reasons that are now pretty obvious.

[VRWC_minion]

How do we know when this stuff was looted if no one was allowed to see it ?

[Scothia]

Don't worry; it'll all end up on eBay eventually.

[weegee]

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 like many Iraqi institutions, its operations were cloaked in secrecy under Mr. Hussein.

So what officials told journalists today may have to be adjusted as a fuller picture comes to light. It remains unclear whether some of the museum's priceless gold, silver and copper antiquities, some of its ancient stone and ceramics, and perhaps some of its fabled bronzes and gold-overlaid ivory, had been locked away for safekeeping elsewhere before the looting, or seized for private display in one of Mr. Hussein's myriad palaces.

Or perhaps some valuables were looted (embezzled) long ago (10+ years) and what was once "out of sight, out of mind" was suddenly going to be open to public scrutiny.

[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.