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I had the opportunity to visit the Iraqi museum in Baghdad before fallen at 2003 & it was days before the war! And every time when I see our ancient monuments in other countries, I don't feel happy about it, but in same time I feel that they are more safe than here because I know if those were here in Iraq they would be destroyed or disappeared. This glory for mesopotamia gave us different picture of Iraq, it isn't the picture of bombing cars, or seeing blood in streets, or "terrorism"...etc, [...] Iraq has a rich civilization through history,...

As American post-conflict combat deaths in Iraq overtook the wartime number, the administration counseled patience. "The war on terror is a test of our strength. It is a test of our perseverance, our patience, and our will," President Bush told an American Legion convention. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice embellished the message with what former White House speechwriters immediately recognize as a greatest-generation pander. "There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes," she told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in San Antonio, Texas, on Aug. 25. "But as some...

What’s THE biggest media myth to come out of the Iraq? War and its messy aftermath? Forget Maureen Dowd’s attempt to trash George W. Bush by altering the president’s words. That kind of "journalism" has become just standard operating procedure at the New York Times. (" All the News Fit to Distort") No, for sheer, long-lasting stamina, we nominate the urban legend about the pillaging of Baghdad’s archaeological museum. Remember how it was supposed to have been emptied by looters? It was THE RAPE OF CIVILIZATION! The anguished comments from distinguished archaeologists sounded more like tabloid headlines. The Death of...

Bits and PiecesLawyers on Parade: Max Factor heir Andrew Luster was captured in Mexico this week, after jumping bail during his trial for assault, rape and drug charges. He was convicted in absentia, and sentenced to 124 years in jail. Now his sleazoid lawyers have suggested that they will appeal his conviction on the grounds that the judge wrongly instructed the jurors that "fleeing can be taken as evidence of guilt." What chutzpah. These same lawyers got the judge to lower the bail on this criminal, so he could get out on bail with "electronic surveillance." That allowed him to...

WMD -- Relic of a quagmireDebra Saunders (archive) June 11, 2003 | Print | SendFirst there was the "quagmire," as U.S. troops prepared to enter Baghdad. TV critics bemoaned the poor planning that, they said, had sabotaged the war strategy and could lead to bloody urban fighting and a prolonged conflict. Then there was the victory. Then there was the scandal of the stolen artifacts, as the director of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities, Donny George, bemoaned the loss of as many as 170,000 relics, characterizing the looting of the museum as "the rape of civilization." Bush-haters jumped on the...

Douglas Anthony Cooper of Montreal chides me for a throwaway line in last week's column about the antiwar crowd's sudden interest in property crime: "Steal the photocopier from Baghdad's Ministry of Genital Clamping and they're pining for the smack of firm government." "Some matters reside beyond the domain of comedy," writes Cooper. "The rape of the National Museum of Iraq and the torching of the National Library will be lamented by historians for centuries." He concludes, "A man of Steyn's sensibilities beneath the sneer I detect a partisan of Western civilization ought to find this an occasion of immense sorrow."...

Volume 56 Number 3, May/June 2003 Editor's note: The following Special Report was written just before the war's outbreak. THE SPECTER OF WAR Protecting Iraq's museum collections and archaeological sites in the event of an invasion. BY JOANNE FARCHAKH The grand reliefs from the Assyrian palaces of Nimrud and Khorsabad--the pride of the Baghdad Museum--are housed in an exhibition hall across the street from the Ministry of Communication and a mere 300 feet from a television and radio station. These buildings, as experience has shown, are the first targets for air strikes, and Iraqi cultural officials fear that the reliefs,...

KUWAIT CITY — In a memo sent two weeks before the fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon office charged with rebuilding Iraq urged top commanders of U.S. ground forces to protect the Iraqi National Museum and other cultural sites from looters. "Coalition forces must secure these facilities in order to prevent looting and the resulting irreparable loss of cultural treasures," says the March 26 memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times. The Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), led by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, sent the five-page memo to senior commanders at the Coalition...

Looters at Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities pillaged and, perhaps, destroyed an archive of more than 100,000 cuneiform clay tablets -- a unique and priceless trove of ancient Mesopotamian writings that included the "Sippar Library," the oldest library ever found intact on its original shelves. Experts described the archive as the world's least-studied large collection of cuneiform -- the oldest known writing on Earth -- a record that covers every aspect of Mesopotamian life over more than 3,000 years. The texts resided in numbered boxes each containing as many as 400 3-inch-by-2-inch tablets. The Sippar Library, discovered in 1986 at...

At a U.S. Central Command briefing on March 26, 2003, it was stated that Iraqi forces have placed military and communications equipment near the 2,000-year-old Ctesiphon arch located on the banks of the Tigris. This situation, similar to Iraq's deliberate placement of fighter planes near the 4,000-year-old ziggurat at Ur during the 1991 Gulf War, illustrates the threat of destruction plaguing the cradle of civilization. Iraqi officials reported in 1992 that 4,000 artifacts went missing during the Gulf War. Only 20 had been returned by 1998. Post-war sanctions on Iraq limited the government's financial ability to preserve antiquities, protect sites,...