This will not change the minds of those who believe it was America's and America's fault only that the Baghdad Museum got looted, but here it is anyway: Experts: Looters Had Keys to Iraqi Antiquity Vaults:
Paris (AP) - Some of the looters who ravaged Iraqi antiquities had keys to museum vaults and were able to take pieces from safes, experts said Thursday at an international meeting.The U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, gathered some 30 art experts and cultural historians in Paris on Thursday to assess the damage to Iraqi museums and libraries looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion.
Although much of the looting was haphazard, experts said some of the thieves clearly knew what they were looking for and where to find it, suggesting they were prepared professionals.
"It looks as if part of the looting was a deliberate planned action," said McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "They were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important Mesopotamian materials put in safes."
Cultural experts, curators and law enforcement officials are scrambling to track down the missing antiquities and prevent further looting of the valuables.
The pillaging has ravaged the irreplaceable Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections that chronicled ancient civilization in Mesopotamia, and the losses have triggered an impassioned outcry in cultural circles.
Many fear 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.
Officials at the UNESCO meeting at its headquarters in Paris said the information was still too sketchy to determine exactly what was missing and how many items were unaccounted for.
But they were united in calling for quick action to track down the pilfered items.
"I have a suspicion it was organized outside the country, in fact I'm pretty sure it was," said Gibson. He added that if a good police team was put together, "I think it could be cracked in no time."
Critics of the failure of the coalition to stop the looting have been acting as if those things were so safe in the museum when the country was under Saddam's rule. They have been using this event as an occasion for moral grandstanding and as yet another opportunity to call the president a moron and his administration a pack of grunting Neanderthals. Even though I am sure that these outraged guardians of human culture don't actually believe that old pots (and pretty gold things) are more important than freeing a country of its thuggish dictator, they certainly came off that way.
Now I am going to tell you all a secret about myself: in general, I prefer interesting artifacts from ancient civilizations to people. Heck, I prefer old moldy bread crusts to some people. But you know what -- I realize, at least, that this is a fault within myself, however jokingly I may speak of my misanthropy, and I have trained myself to not give into this feeling when there is no good reason to, and to not brag about this tendency of mine as if it was some kind of virtue. I mean, after all, my most favoritest novel has as its plot line the necessity of destroying an ancient, powerful, unique, and most precious gold object.
(Via A Small Victory.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at April 17, 2003 02:13 PMCritics of the failure of the coalition to stop the looting have been acting as if those things were so safe in the museum when the country was under Saddam's rule.
No “they” (who is “they,” by the way?) don't. However, if we sent several American and British combat battalions to protect the oil fields, why not send a couple of squads to protect the museums? Preserving the Iraqi economic future is of course important, but so is protecting its cultural heritage, especially if we want to win their "hearts and minds." We knew the addresses and we had plenty of resources available to do this. In fact, in a couple of cities we did work diligently to protect important religious, cultural, and historical sites from damage and looting. So, once again, I find your logic to be confusing.
...don't actually believe that old pots (and pretty gold things) are more important than freeing a country of its thuggish dictator...
Funny, the first thing our ground forces did in Iraq was to secure the oil fields. Using your logic, does this mean the smelly, black, bubbly stuff is more important than freeing the country of its thuggish dictator?
Maybe I am a "moral grandstander" because I demand accountability by the people in power at every step when my country conducts war (or anything else, for that matter). I am criticizing people who control the largest and most powerful military in the world, and a huge national budget and massive government structure that boggles the mind. It is power that can be easily corrupted and used for nefarious (or moronic and neanderthalic) purposes.
You, on the other hand, only seem to demand accountability from journalists, entertainers, writers, and other bloggers when they express their criticism of those in power. Is that not moral grandstanding too, Andrea? Since you seem to pick much weaker targets for your moral grandstanding, what does that make you, Andrea? Heroic? Or are you like the big, muscular jock flipping rat tails at the anemic dorks and knock-kneed fatties in the locker room?
"have been acting as if those things were so safe in the museum when the country was under Saddam's rule"
I followed your link from the Poor Man over.
Um... seeing that the artifacts were safe until Baghdad was sacked and civil order broke down, wouldn't that indicate that they were safe under Saddam's rule? The objects have been in Iraq for over 5,000 years, and though the theft and sale of artifacts is a huge international problem, all that stuff in the museum was there until a week ago, right? So the deposed power is responsible for order after it's deposed?
What could you possibly mean by your comment? And,
"more important than freeing a country of its thuggish dictator, they certainly came off that way"
is a red herring as there ever was, and meaningless.
Also- the fact that in the city that housed some of the world's most valuable archealogical treasures there were (gasp!) professional theives with maybe a few contacts on the inside is to be expected. It doesn't matter if they used laser-guided treasure monkeys to loot the place, as the occupying army it was our responsibility to maintain civil order.
To draw and analogy from your summation: if in Smalltown, USA, a biker gang moved in and sacked and looted the place for two days, it would not be the fault of the local police force because the bikers are responsible for the looting, not the police force.
Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Yo- get yourself a copy of a used logic course textbook.
Posted by: Tim at April 17, 2003 at 05:14 PMI have a very strong feeling, based on news reports the above obviously have not seen nor heard of, that we'll find a lot of the missing artifacts when we find certain missing regime bigwigs.
Posted by: Kevin McGehee at April 17, 2003 at 07:27 PMOh right, some old pot is worth the life of an American soldier or Marine. I don't fucking think so!!
Posted by: David Crawford at April 17, 2003 at 07:34 PMYou know, Mat, I don't have to prove myself to you. If you don't like the opinions you read here, you are welcome to seek out other blogs. I simply disagree that our main job was to "safeguard the Iraqi's cultural heritage" -- I am afraid that that is the Iraqis' job, and if they can't do it, that is too bad. I don't particularly care about getting "their hearts and minds," and I do in fact believe that their "smelly, black, bubbly" oil is more important, because that is their main source of income, and we were not going to be able to secure the oil fields for their future use without deposing the said thuggish dictator.
That goes for you too, Tim. As for your claim that since there was no overt looting pre-invasion, that therefore the artifacts were in fact safe under Hussein's rule, I am not even going to bother correcting you. Look up the pertinent articles yourself.
Now I am sorry if I sound heartless and mean to you, but that is my prerogative, and you don't have to date me, and if I have not already made this clear, I do not care what you, or the Iraqis, or sad puppies in the meadow, or kittens, or God, think about me.
By the way, I will ban you if you resort to insulting me on my weblog. I don't have to take shit from strangers on the street, and I don't have to take it from strangers on my blog. This is not "censoring," as you both have your own websites. This is just a heads-up.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 17, 2003 at 07:34 PMLike I said already - everyone expects the U.S. 'to be the heros and come through and do the impossible - to save the world in a day without ever doing so much putting a single scratch on the furniture.'
Real life is not like an action adventure cartoon in which all the characters are either good or evil. In the months and years to come I'm sure a lot of things will come out about mistakes that were made and actual wrongdoing by U.S. troops, but the bad things Americans sometimes do does not cancel out all the good we do. I have no problem with people criticizing the U.S. as long as they don't exaggerate the bad and act like the good is irrelevant.
Posted by: Lynn S at April 17, 2003 at 08:10 PMUpdate: from the WSJ's Best of the Web (it's the fifth item down):
The Wall Street Journal (link requires WSJ.com subscription) reports that the looting at Baghdad's Iraq National Museum wasn't as bad as early reports had it:I got this off of Sgt. Stryker's website. It's part of a subscriber-only article. I don't have a subscription, so I can't tell you what's in the whole thing. Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 17, 2003 at 08:26 PMThanks to Iraqi preparations before the war, it seems the worst has been avoided. Donny George, the director-general of restoration at the Iraqi Antiquities Department, Wednesday said his staff had preserved the museum's most important treasures, including the kings' graves of Ur and the Assyrian bulls. These objects were hidden in vaults that haven't been violated by looters."Most of the things were removed. We knew a war was coming, so it was our duty to protect everything," Mr. George said. "We thought there would be some sort of bombing at the museum. We never thought it could be looted."
And why didn't America stop such looting as did take place? Lt. Col. Eric Schwartz of the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division "said he couldn't move into the museum compound and protect it from looters last week because his soldiers were taking fire from the building--and were determined not to respond."
Please ban me, Andrea. You're right, you have nothing to prove to me--and I am not asking you to. However, since you certainly love to fling feces at everyone with whom you disagree, and you also love to insult people with great glee, it's rather odd that you have such a low tolerance for any backlash to your insults. The first time I ever encountered you was when you insulted me on Jeff Goldstein's blog (at a time I was new to this blogging underworld and hadn't figured out that was the norm), and yet I've remained fairly civil since then. Apparently you can't take it in return, so, fine, ban me. You are obviously thin-skinned, mentally unstable, and a bully, and this only proves my point further. Ban away, bully.
Posted by: mat at April 17, 2003 at 09:19 PMI actually think the looting of the museum (however it happened) is something the coalition forces ought to have tried harder to prevent.
But citing the relatively tight guarding of oil fields as evidence of sinister intentions is just dumb. Oil is Iraq's primary way of making money, regardless of who's in power. The people of Iraq are going to need those oil fields intact and secure-- and we know from 1991 what horror can be wrought by people intent on sabotaging them. So there's certainly a motive for concentrating on them even if coalition intentions are benign.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin at April 17, 2003 at 09:50 PMMat, you only embarrass yourself when you whine like that. My god -- you still harbor some grudge over "being insulted" on Jeff Goldstein's blog -- which he hasn't updated in nearly a year? You know what -- I'm sure I did, and that you deserved it, because I have no patience for the sort of pompous fool you seem to be -- but I don't remember the occasion or what I slammed you for. That should give you some idea of how important it was to me and how much I care about your opinion.
And incidentally, my comment about banning was only a warning that you and Tim (but Tim more than you) were skirting a little too close to the sort of behavior that I refuse to tolerate, and also a warning to any others that might want to drop in and start a comments fight. It wasn't directed solely at you, because believe it or not the whole world doesn't revolve around you. And you actually accuse ME of being thin-skinned because I won't sit and take my admonshiment from Mr. Big Man Knowitall like a good girl. You can take your fragile little ego and go straight to hell. I've had enough people like you in my offscreen life, I don't need to deal with them onscreen too.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 17, 2003 at 10:05 PMOur military goal going in to this war was to oust Saddam and his regime. There were no provisions for anything else. Perhaps if our military goal was to go in and save the precious historical artifacts in the Iraqi museums we would have guarded them more closely. Our military is not there to make friends and influence people - it is there to forcibly remove a man and his regime who have turned their noses up at the UN resolutions for 12 years (and got away with it because we had a president happily getting his knob polished).
Somewhere in the Bill Clinton era of military misunderstanding we learned that the military should be mis-used to distribute humanitarian aid; I have mistakenly thought that is what the Red Cross and World Health Organization are for - silly me. Once again, our military is there for a specific purpose and it is NOT to distribute humanitarian aid. If they do that, then fine, but that is not the primary task of ANY military.
Also, if my addled brain serves me, I seem to remember a lot of Austrian, Czech, Polish, Romanian, etc, treasures being "lost" during WW2. No one told us or the Soviets when we came in and took back those lands from the Nazis that we should be guarding the museums. People were just happy to be freed of the Nazi oppression. Is is possible that this is also the reaction of the Iraqi people? NAAAAAAAH! That wouldn't be a good story for CNN!
Posted by: BillH at April 17, 2003 at 10:48 PMFrom Archaeology magazine's online news, March 27, 2003 (emphasis added):
Officials at the Baghdad Museum have placed their stone sculptures in sandbags to protect them from 'ground-shaking' bombs. They have also painted "UNESCO" on the roof of their museum to mark its cultural significance and to avoid its being a target of an air strike. The staff is now living in the museum to prevent potential plundering and has been trained to transport artifacts filling thirty-two exhibition rooms to secret locations in just one day.Posted by: Lynxx Pherrett at April 18, 2003 at 02:55 AM
Wouldn't it be funny if all the "stolen" artifacts turned up in a warehouse down the street? I also had a thought -- surprisingly, not until today, and I work in the industry -- were these things insured?
Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 18, 2003 at 03:16 AMNo one knows if our soldiershad even gotten to the Museum's neighborhood when it was looted. If they hadn't, it is kind of hard to hold us responsible for what happened, regardless.
The first soldiers to the Museum were fired on from inside the Museum - kind of makes you wonder how secure it was BEFORE we were in a position to protect it. Under the rules of engagement adopted at the urging of those who do, in fact, place the protection of artifacts above the lives of our soldiers, they were forbidden to fire back at the "historical site." So they retired. Roll that irony on your tongue and savor its layers and layers of bitter flavor.
Posted by: T. Hartin at April 18, 2003 at 07:41 AMNo one knows if our soldiers had even gotten to the Museum's neighborhood when it was looted. If they hadn't, it is kind of hard to hold us responsible for what happened, regardless.
The first soldiers to the Museum were fired on from inside the Museum - kind of makes you wonder how secure it was BEFORE we were in a position to protect it. Under the rules of engagement adopted at the urging of those who do, in fact, place the protection of artifacts above the lives of our soldiers, they were forbidden to fire back at the "historical site." So they retired. Roll that irony on your tongue and savor its layers and layers of bitter flavor.
Posted by: T. Hartin at April 18, 2003 at 07:43 AMNope, T. Hartin, Andrea, and Lynxx. You're missing the point, here.
The US started the war (we'll just forget all that UNSC stuff). The US PARTICIPATED in the war. Therefore, anything bad that happens is our fault.
Did a Fedayeen put up a human shield in front of himself? Then the US soldier should've shot the gun outta the Fedayeen's hand (hey, it's done often enough in Hollywood, and the admonition that wars aren't movies ONLY applies to those who are pro-war).
Did a bomb produce blast effects beyond its target? Then the US military is a buncha baby-killers.
Did the bad guys hide stuff in hospitals, next to landmarks, and fight from mosques and museums? Yawn, they were bad, (Hey, see, I SAID they were bad), but responding in kind, in a war zone, that makes us just as bad, too.
And, remember, I get to carp, but don't you dare DARE ask me for a better solution. That's not my job, thank you very much. And we'll never know, will we, if just ONE MORE UNSC Resolution might not have made Saddam stop his torture, reveal his weapons, and respect human rights. I mean, you can't really say it's IMPOSSIBLE, right?
There, I hope I've set you right-wing ninnies straight. Now, I've got an anti-globo protest to attend, so I'm outta here.
Posted by: Dean at April 18, 2003 at 10:08 AM