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You were wrong in #17 when you called this a "blunder" (how can it be a blunder when most of the looting never occurred in the first place?).... The exact number of lost items seems to change, but currently it's ranging between 17 and 38--and I'm betting that even those will turn up. Your hand-wringing was for naught.

You didn't read the article very well. It says that over 5,000 items were taken, as well as the 38 high-profile items mentioned early in the article. And I still believe it was a mistake not to secure the museum, just as we secured the oil ministry. Had we done so, we would know which items were looted before we even got there.

Am I happy that only a few thousand items disappeared instead of half the collection? Of course! But being happy that the consequences of a mistake were not as great as feared is not the same as saying it wasn't a mistake.

just as we secured the oil ministry.

From today's FrontPageMagazine.com.

More irritating is the myth constantly repeated by antiwar columnists that the military let the city be destroyed--in particular the hospitals and the national museum--while guarding the Ministry of Oil. The museum looting is turning out to have been grotesquely exaggerated. And there is no evidence for the ministry of oil story. Depending on the article, the Marines had either a tank or a machine gun nest outside the ministry. Look for a photo of that tank or that machine gun nest and you'll look in vain. And even if the Marines had briefly guarded the oil ministry it would have been by accident: The Marines defended only the streets around their own headquarters and so-called Areas of Operation. Again, though, given the pro-regime sources favored by so many of the press corps huddled in the Palestine Hotel, it's not surprising that this rumor became gospel.