[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Krauthammer: Hoaxes, Hype and Humiliation
Washington Post ^ | 06/13/03 | Charles Krauthammer

"It took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters."

-- New York Times, April 13

"You'd have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find looting on this scale."

-- British archaeologist Eleanor Robson, New York Times, April 16

Well, not really. Turns out the Iraqi National Museum lost not 170,000 treasures but 33. You'd have to go back centuries, say, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find mendacity on this scale.

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[Ragtime Cowgirl]

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Friday, June 13, 2003

Protesters scale wall at Yongsan

Members of an outlawed protest group scaled a wall Thursday, leaping onto the U.S. military’s headquarters in Korea, Army officials said. All 14 resisted but were arrested using plastic and regular handcuffs, said Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, 8th Army public affairs officer. No injuries were reported and the base was not damaged. The group was turned over to Korean National Police officers after about 30 minutes, Boylan said. “We were not sure where they were trying to go,” Boylan said. “We support the right to protest and freedom of speech, but we do not condone one illegally entering the facility.”

(Full story)

French anti-mine group takes effort to Baghdad The first pyramid of Shoes Against Landmines came to Iraq’s capital city Friday, displayed in a run-down park in the middle of a Baghdad traffic circle. Handicap International, a nonprofit organization trying to stop the use of land mines, erected the pyramid as a humanitarian symbol. But for the half-dozen homeless Iraqi children nearby, it represented an opportunity to clad their bare feet with new shoes. They went away barefooted. (Full story)     Weapons sweep in Baghdad market produces little This was a mission in which the chaplain went along — just in case. Early on Thursday, roughly 250 soldiers of the 1st Armored Division raided one of the busiest downtown marketplaces in their first Operation Market Sweep, searching street vendors for weapons and drugs and trying to give order to the chaotic open-air bazaar. “With an operation this large, and a chance of possible casualties, a chaplain always comes along,” said Maj. Bryan Walker, chaplain to the 1st Brigade of the 1st AD. (Full story)

Michael Abrams / Stars and Stripes A pyramid of shoes, set up in a Baghdad square, symbolizes the suffering caused by land mines. Handicap International, a French anti-landmine group, held a mine awareness presentation/protest on the square Friday morning.

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