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OReilly was not critical of the troops at all. He was critical of someone up top who obvioulsy placed no priority on protecting these priceless artifacts. It amazes me how some of you guys cannot see how obvious a blunder this is. This is a crime against all of us not just the iraqi people. I guess some of you do not care if massive looting occurs when it could have been prevented.

I agree with you. While I agree with the goals of the war and the way it has been conducted, I think this was a blunder. Here's a few points I'd like to make.

There is a lot we still don't know, but it appears that there was much destruction and possibly some pilfering that took place after our troops arrived in Baghdad. Had we secured the museum, we could have prevented it.

We may never know what was taken before we arrived and what was taken after we arrived. Had we secured the museum, we would know.

Apparently, one of the commanding officers in Baghdad said we were taking fire from the museum grounds and that's why it couldn't be secured. But Central Command and DOD are not saying that we even tried to. Rumsfeld was very dismissive of the issue. Did we try or didn't we? The statement also contradicts a report that we did in fact secure the building for a half hour with a tank and then left. The statement about "taking fire" doesn't really tell us much. If we avoided every place we were "taking fire" from, we wouldn't be in Iraq right now. Does he mean that the Iraqi's chased us off because we had insufficient force? Then had we allocated sufficient force to secure the museum, we could have stopped the looting that transpired and killed some bad guys too.

The looting of this museum following the fall of the regime was entirely predictable. After the Shi'a uprising following the Gulf War, nine museums in Southern Iraq were looted and over 4,000 items stolen. There was much discussion of this fact in the months leading up to this war.

That's right. Let's castigate the U.S. for "letting" this happen--did you bother to even read any of the links I provided? Like, for instance, the one that said the museum had probably been looted long before the war started?

Several points:

1. WE did not loot the museum. The Iraqis did, and won't they be surprised when they try to sell it on the black market and discover most of it was fake. Serves them right.

2. When it comes to setting priorities, which should rank first? Guarding a museum, OR saving lives and liberating a country (including a large number of children released from Iraqi prisons)? The thing is, our troops were never meant to be museum rent-a-cops. Let them do what they were trained to do. Returning to my earlier point, if the Iraqis involved had half an ounce of honor, this conversation wouldn't even be necessary.

3. Again, according to articles linked above and elsewhere, the U.S. knew that most of the important items were already gone, replaced by replicas--why waste manpower and lives on saving fakes?

Anyone who would choose guarding a museum over saving lives and liberating a country is a danged fool. I'm just stunned that there are so many of them.