Memo to GW & Co.: It's long overdue for you folks to clean house.
Posted on 04/18/2003 8:16:09 AM PDT by Incorrigible
Friday, April 18, 2003
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Three members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee have resigned to protest U.S. military unresponsiveness as Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities was looted, even though reports suggest the thefts may have been carried out by professional thieves.
FBI Director Robert Mueller, meanwhile, said his agency was in on the hunt for looted Iraqi treasures.
Martin E. Sullivan, Richard S. Lanier and Gary Vikan, each appointed by former President Clinton, said they were disappointed by the military's failure to protect Iraq's historical artifacts.
"The tragedy was not prevented, due to our nation's inaction," Sullivan, the committee's chairman, wrote in his letter of resignation.
Noting that American scholars had told the State Department about the location of Iraqi museums and historic sites in Iraq, he said the president "is burdened by a compelling moral obligation to plan for and try to prevent indiscriminate looting and destruction."
But art experts and historians suggested yesterday that thieves, likely organized outside Iraq, pillaged the nation's priceless ancient history collections by using the cover of widespread looting -- and vault keys.
The bandits were so efficient at emptying Iraqi libraries and museums that reports have already surfaced of artifacts appearing on the black market, some experts said. Certain thieves apparently knew exactly what they wanted from the irreplaceable Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections, and exactly where to find them.
"It looks as if part of the theft was a very, very deliberate, planned action," said McGuire Gibson, president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "It really looks like a very professional job."
Gibson was among 30 art experts and cultural historians assembled by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris to assess the damage to Iraq's heritage in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion.
But it remained unclear exactly what was gone and what survived the looting and thievery. With many museum records now in ashes and access to Iraq still cut off, it could take weeks or months to answer those questions.
Establishing a database was a key to finding out what had survived, and tracking down what was stolen, the experts said.
Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, said some of the greatest treasures -- including gold jewelry of the Assyrian queens -- were placed in the vaults of the national bank after the 1991 Gulf War. There was no information on whether those items remained inside.
The pillaging has ravaged the irreplaceable Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections that chronicled ancient civilization in Mesopotamia -- the home of modern-day Iraq. Although much of the looting was haphazard, experts said some of it was highly organized.
"They were able to obtain keys from somewhere for the vaults and were able to take out the very important, the very best material," Gibson said. "I have a suspicion it was organized outside the country. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was."
Many at a UNESCO meeting feared the stolen artifacts have been absorbed into highly organized trafficking rings that ferry the goods through a series of middlemen to collectors in Europe, the United States and Japan.
The FBI was cooperating with the international law enforcement organization Interpol in issuing alerts to all member nations to try to track any sales of the artifacts "on both the open and black markets," Muller said.
Ahead of the war, Iraq's antiquities' authorities gathered artifacts from around the country and moved them to Baghdad's National Museum, assuming the museum would not be bombed, Gibson said.
"They did not count on the museum being looted," he said.
Much anger has been directed at U.S. troops, who stood by and watched as Iraq's treasures were carted off.
Koichiro Matsuura, director- general of Paris-based UNESCO, called yesterday for a U.N. resolution imposing a temporary embargo on trade in Iraqi antiquities. Such a resolution would also call for the return of such items to Iraq, he said.
"To preserve the Iraqi cultural heritage is, in a word, to enable Iraq to successfully make its transition to a new, free and prosperous society," the UNESCO chief said.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the United States "in liberating Iraq worked very hard to protect infrastructure in Iraq and to preserve the valued resources of Iraq for the people of Iraq."
"It is unfortunate that there was looting and damage done," she said.
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Not everyone who lament the loss of this museum is a leftist. I was deeply dismayed at the looting of this museum. I hope many of the artifacts can be recovered.
Memo to GW & Co.: It's long overdue for you folks to clean house.
Bye, guys! Nice knowin' ya...
YOu all just better hope it was not organized in America or that most of the loot is not traced back to American collectors. This could turn out to be deep doo doo. Look at what is already brewing and consider the implications.
Excerpt: From The Spectator UK 4/19 Stealing a country’s physical history, its archaeological remains, has become the world’s third biggest organised racket, after drugs and guns.
There are those who argue that it shouldn’t need to be illegal at all. There are those who say, look, the free market should operate here. Why shouldn’t a private collector be allowed to buy an antiquity and keep it in his bathroom, maybe next to the bidet, or as a tasteful holder for the Toilet Duck, if he wishes to do so, and if both he and the seller are happy with the price?
You will not be surprised to hear that many of those who argue this way are American. You may not be surprised, either, that shortly before the invasion of Iraq, and with the spoils of war on their mind, some of these people formed themselves into a lobbying organisation called the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP). This group want a ‘relaxation’ of Iraq’s tight restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities. They object to what they call Iraq’s ‘retentionist’ policy towards its archaeological treasures. (I love the pejorative use of the word ‘retentionist’ in this context; ‘Goddam sand-niggers want to retain all their history!’)
The treasurer of the group, one William Pearlstein, has said that he would support a postwar government in Iraq that would make it easier to have things ‘dispersed’ to, er, for the sake of argument, the United States. And, on 24 January this year, the ACCP met with the US defense department to impress this point upon the politicians and the military. I tracked down one of the people who attended this meeting, and asked what the archaeologists had to say for themselves.
The rest is here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/spectator/spec58.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.