| Since the recent mention of the Iraq museum story sprouted on another thread, I thought the truth was in order:
First of all, the worst predations against Iraq's historic treasures were carried out by the very government American soldiers went to Iraq to unseat. Over many years, Saddam and his cronies secretly removed Babylonian artifacts from museums and sold them abroad for personal cash, melted down ancient metal-works for their gold, and systematically neglected and abused archeological sites (like the Ziggurat of Ur which I gazed upon sadly acrooss the wreckage of Tallil Air Base).
Some of the most hysterical reporting of the entire Iraq War — subsequently echoed, re-echoed, and re-re-echoed by critics all around the globe — centered around the looting of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad. The initial reports stated that thousands of priceless and irreplaceable artifacts has disappeared, many likely never to be seen again.
The stories gushed out when low-level museum employees entered the building after the U.S. forces liberated Baghdad, saw empty cabinets and shelves, and shrieked to drama-seeking foreign reporters that all the best pieces were gone — apparently taken by the looters who went on a spree the moment Saddam's enforcers disappeared from the scene. Western critics howled, academics resigned positions in protest and opportunists attacked the "barbarism" of U.S. forces for failing to better secure the museum. Swept up in the rumors, many Iraqis assumed that U.S. troops stole the valuable artifacts. And a fresh wave of anti-American indignation rippled through Europe.
But the reporting that sparked all this storm about the looting was wrong. Completely wrong. Yes the cabinets were empty. BUT THAT'S BECAUSE THE MUSEUM'S SENIOR EMPLOYEES HAD STASHED ALL THE REALLY VALUABLE PARTS OF THE COLLECTION IN VAULTS JUST AS FIGHTING BROKE OUT. "We knew a war was coming, so it was our duty to protect everything," explained a museum director.
Alas, only one reporter in Baghdad bothered to check beneath the surface of the juicy treasure-looting story for the real facts. By talking to museum official, Donnie George, Yaroslav Trifimov of the Wall Street Journal managed, rather easily, to discover the unreported truth. By the time Trofimov's revelation was printed on April 17, though, the reporting frenzy had proceeded so far that the international public had become irrevocably convinced that the national treasures of Iraq had all been hauled away by vandals. And the media did very little to correct the record subsequently. At the time I write, the number of items thought to be missing from the museum had been revised from the original, blindly reported claim of 170,000 all the way down to 25 artifacts, none of them particularly consequential. Yet, I dare say most readers of this book will be learning for the first time from my accountthat the museum-looting story was almost entirely bogus.
Excerpt from "BOOTS ON THE GROUND"
By Karl Zinsmeister, frontline reporter embedded with the U.S. 82nd AB Div. during the battle for Iraq. | |
