Keith Devens .com

The truth about the Baghdad museum

Via 0xDECAFBAD, an amazing article from The Guardian: Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth

When, back in mid-April, the news first arrived of the looting at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, words hardly failed anyone. No fewer than 170,000 items had, it was universally reported, been stolen or destroyed, representing a large proportion of Iraq's tangible culture. And it had all happened as some US troops stood by and watched, and others had guarded the oil ministry.

So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks.

George is now quoted as saying that that items lost could represent "a small percentage" of the collection and blamed shoddy reporting for the exaggeration.

This indictment of world journalism has caused some surprise to those who listened to George and others speak at the British Museum meeting. One art historian, Dr Tom Flynn, now speaks of his "great bewilderment". "Donny George himself had ample opportunity to clarify to the best of [his] knowledge the extent of the looting and the likely number of missing objects," says Flynn. "Is it not a little strange that quite so many journalists went away with the wrong impression, while Mr George made little or not attempt to clarify the context of the figure of 170,000 which he repeated with such regularity and gusto before, during, and after that meeting." To Flynn it is also odd that George didn't seem to know that pieces had been taken into hiding or evacuated. "There is a queasy subtext here if you bother to seek it out," he suggests.

Overall, he concluded, most of the serious looting "was an inside job".

The Americans had said that the museum was a substantial point of Iraqi resistance, and this explained their reticence in occupying it. Not true, said George, a few militia-men had fired from the grounds and that was all. This, as Cruikshank heavily implied, was a lie. Not only were there firing positions in the grounds, but at the back of the museum there was a room that seemed to have been used as a military command post.

Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.

Kick ass. Fuck everyone who made such a big deal out of this. You were wrong.

Kudos to David Aaronovitch at the Guardian for such a candid article.

Permalink | 5 Comments | Tags: Opinions/Politics | id 3956

01:09 (utc-4)
edited: 01:15 (utc-4)

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Why thanks Doesn't prove a thing, I can find a dozen articles that disagree with that. It all depends on who you believe. I did read a few later on that revealed a good deal of the artifacts are being returned, some by people who removed them to protect them. They didn't want to inform US troops because they didn't trust them, which is a rather sad state of affairs. Like I stated originally, the truth is always somewhere in between the opinion of both sides.

Things where still allowed to be looted, a small percentage of history is still gone. Just as the 2000-3000 innocent deaths where a small percentage. The world is still a little poorer for it, the military still didn't defend what was still in the museums, or place a priority on it.

The "Fuck everyone" was very mature btw.

Looters Stole 6,000 Artifacts

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 21, 2003; Page A16

U.S. and Iraqi officials have confirmed the theft of at least 6,000 artifacts from Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities during a prolonged looting spree as U.S. forces entered Baghdad two months ago, a leading archaeologist said yesterday.

University of Chicago archaeologist McGuire Gibson said the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told him June 13 that the official count of missing items had reached 6,000 and was climbing as museum and Customs investigators proceeded with an inventory of three looted storerooms.

The June 13 total was double the number of stolen items reported by Customs a week earlier, and Gibson suggested the final tally could be "far, far worse." Customs could not immediately obtain an updated report, a spokesman said.

The mid-June count was the latest in a confusing chain of seemingly contradictory estimates of losses at the museum, the principal repository of artifacts from thousands of Iraqi archaeological sites documenting human history from the dawn of civilization 7,000 years ago to the pinnacle of medieval Islam.

Well, I was referring specifically to the temple mount, where we lost and are losing who knows what. But that's fine. My whole argument all along was that this was blown way out of proportion, and largely made a big deal out of by people who dearly wanted to have something to hold against America.

Sure, even though it was an inside job and people had keys to the place, and even though many things were removed before we even got there, ande even though they allegedly had snipers hanging around the building[1], sure we probably could have done a little more to protect the artifacts.

[1] Though I'm not completely sure if that's been verified, but I've heard it from multiple sources.

Friday, June 13, 2003

The truth about the Baghdad museum

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