This is the most detailed answer I've come across so far:
The Americans have a ready answer. “We were fighting the whole time,” Captain Jason Conroy said, wiping his brow as he guarded the museum gate. “For four days we were taking machinegun-fire and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) from these buildings around here. They had a bunker around the back of the museum with a cache of RPGs. Guys were running out of that alley, firing Kalashnikovs at us.When we shot them, they threw out hooks, dragged the bodies and guns back and came at us again.”
After four days of intense street battles with Saddam’s Fedayin and Special Republican Guards, Captain Conroy said, his company of Abrams tanks and armoured vehicles was ordered north on April 15 to destroy an anti-aircraft gun.
“When we got back the next day, everything was already on fire here and the press were here asking us: ‘How come you weren’t in the museum three days ago?’ I said: ‘If you guys had been here three days ago, you would know why.’”
This won't be enough for people, though, who think that the US military is possessed of supernatural powers that they refuse to use simply out of sheer meanness.
(Via The Ghost of a Flea.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at April 26, 2003 09:20 AMThanks for this link, Andrea. I had posted a somewhat lengthy analysis of this event based on viewing some detail maps of the area around the museum, and the account given by the Army captain sounds quite reasonable to me.
Posted by: Tobacco Road Fogey at April 26, 2003 at 12:03 PMIf the military hadn't been bogged down in FIGHTING, they might have kept the goddam REPORTERS from looting.
Posted by: Acidman at April 27, 2003 at 03:01 PM