Mark Steyn: Looting Iraq's 'heritage'

Jerusalem Post ^ | 4-29-03 | Mark Steyn

[moneyrunner]

”As Chesterton, I believe, said: A gentleman is one who never offends someone else unintentionally.”

Exactly. And – he may have added – without vulgarity.

[American in Israel]

. I'd like to see an accounting of what exactly has been irreplacebly lost from this heist.

Unfortunately the unwashed masses that looted the museum somehow thought to take time to destroy the documents that listed what was there. Pretty smart, if the unwashed masses wanted to cover up a major heist, but nonsensical if the were just petty thieves.

The only reason to shred the documents, was to cover the tracks of the final purchaser, a clear sign of the final purchaser being the operator of the heist instead of the unwashed masses.

[foreshadowed at waco]

We have several large reliefs in the Brooklyn Museum that come from Mesopotamia...I think that Steyn makes a good point...the people kvelling about the lost antiquities didn't seem to mind the people being slaughtered by the Saddam regime...potshards over people?...not a very humane way of looking at things.

[Isle of sanity in CA]

He also doesn't read the text of the Geneva Conventions that he and Bush were oh, so furious about Al-Jazeera supposedly flouting, for those same treaties obligate us under international law to prevent "pillage," described as early as 1907 as a crime against humanity.

Pillage:
1. To rob of goods by force, especially in time of war; plunder.
2. To take as spoils.

The American military is not pillaging.

The Iraqi people (by definition) are incapable of pillaging.

We have no obligation under the geneva convention to prevent the Iraqi people from stealing their own items.
We are only required to make sure that our troops do not pillage.

They aren't.

You're wrong. Buh-Bye!

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG homepage, not sending a general distribution.

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