"But "I would personally suggest it was done by Saddam's circle, and my prime suspect would by Uday," says Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," in an interview. "Saddam and his family are basically cultural vandals. When he left Kuwait he trashed the place. So it makes sense that when he leaves Iraq he took the most valuable items." Saddam's family is essentially "a Mafia family, and Barzan [Saddam's half-brother], the guy arrested Thursday, was basically the bagman."
Saddam had been busy looting the museum long before the war began. A decade ago, Iraq Opposition Radio alleged that "several antiquity collections have found their way outside Iraq and been sold for the benefit of Saddam's family and his cronies." And in October the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that Saddam had started moving -- to a remote town in northwestern Iraq -- several truckloads of "gold bars and artworks from museums in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul."
But clearly he hadn't moved it all, and at least some of the looting, to judge by press accounts, was done by ordinary Iraqis on a spree. Again: Why? It's not as if there is an easy resale market in such things.
I thought that you might like to have this to use as a MOAB the next time some phoney conservative on Free Republic tries to blame our troops, Rummy and GW for the looting of the Museum.
Thanks to my FRiend Dave, here's a little further edification for the benefit of the vast right wing POSERS.
As the old poker saying goes AVRWC, "READ 'EM AND WEEP"