You are correct that those museums have much of Iraq's riches, but are you aware that everything dug up in Iraq since the 1920s has gone into Iraqi museums, principly this one? Their collection of cuneiform tablets numbered more than 100,000. While we don't know how much was taken beforehand, how much remains, and how much destroyed or pilfered following our troops arrival, we could have secured the museum and prevented the looting that followed our arrival. It would also have allowed us to quantify some of the answers to those questions.
All this crying is transparently obvious crocodile tears from the usual hate America crowd.
Not all of it. There are many people on this board who agree with the objectives of the war but think this was a major blunder.
Gauranteed they wouldn't know a Babylonion cultural artifact from an Assyrian or even an Egyptian if you stuck it up THEIR wazoo.
I would know the difference.
According to reports, our troops were taking fire from the museum, but were under orders not to respond so as not to endanger the museum's contents.
It would appear that our forces were indeed sensitive to the issue, but found themselves in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.