Pentagon Was Told of Risk to Museums

[Theophylact]

U.S. Urged to Save Iraq's Historic Artifacts (The Washington Post, 14 April)

In the months leading up to the Iraq war, U.S. scholars repeatedly urged the Defense Department to protect Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage from looters, and warned specifically that the National Museum of Antiquities was the single most important site in the country.

Late in January, a mix of scholars, museum directors, art collectors and antiquities dealers asked for and were granted a meeting at the Pentagon to discuss their misgivings. McGuire Gibson, an Iraq specialist at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, said yesterday that he went back twice more, and he and colleagues peppered Defense Department officials with e-mail reminders in the weeks before the war began.

"I thought I was given assurances that sites and museums would be protected," Gibson said. Instead, even with U.S. forces firmly in control of Baghdad last week, looters breached the museum, trashed its galleries, burned its records, invaded its vaults and smashed or carried off thousands of artifacts dating from the founding of ancient Sumer around 3,500 B.C. to the end of Islam's Abbasid Caliphate in 1258 A.D.

For full article, see link.

[Epidemic]

Sad.

I wonder what kept them from protecting it. Was it oversight, miscommunication, not under control at the time.

What ever the cause it is sad.

[J-Excel]

That's terrible. The soldiers were ordered not to act as police right after the fall of Baghdad, probably in order to protect civilians and prevent a PR disaster. If a soldier had shot and killed a looter it would have been headline news and the anti-war people around the world would have made a big deal about it. Instead, they created a PR mess by not acting as police. This was a lose-lose situation for the people that just freed millions of Iraqis from an evil dictator. At least this lose outcome didn't result in more deaths. Everyone should be happy about that.

[Epidemic]

For all the anti-War folks who would use this incident as a club to hit the US with. answer this question.

How many people would you suggest that americans kill to stop the looting prior to it's running its natural course.

[osprey4]

This sort of thing happens in LA every few years. They blamed the cops then, too.

[Fagin]

The mere presence of Armed troops would have been sufficient to deter looters, with out shooting any one. Why the troops were not ordered to protect the Artifacts – I have no idea, unless some one beat the looters to the punch, leaving the looters to take the blame.

[caddmannq]

Too bad about the antiquities. Science has not been well served, here, nor throughout the history of the world, IMHO.

But how many dead American soldiers would you have traded for the whole lot?

OK...maybe that's not fair, but we do have a limited amount of manpower there. IMHO, when we figured out that the Europeans weren't gonna attack with us, we should have sent three times as many men as we did. Then we might have saved every precious scrap of history.

So...lesseee...Lotsa antiquities in Damascus? What if we have to go there next? What should we do to protect artifacts?

[Epidemic]

Were they in a position to send an armed force to the museum the day of the looting? Or did that little thing called the war get in the way?

[J-Excel]

Originally posted by Fagin
The mere presence of Armed troops would have been sufficient to deter looters, with out shooting any one. Why the troops were not ordered to protect the Artifacts – I have no idea, unless some one beat the looters to the punch, leaving the looters to take the blame.

What are you implying?

[alondra]

wasn't it iraqis that did the destruction??? they didn't show much respect for history...