There's a scrap about this on another board I frequent, and the resident Administration Apologists apparently just quoted this Sullivan dude rather than actually read news stories. One boson suggested "maybe there wasn't any looting at all." (Because, I guess, 33 is almost zero compared to 170,000?)

Very Good news: More artifacts are trickling back in. The AP is reporting that three guys turned in the Warka Vase.

What bothers me is that no one seems to be disturbed by the fact that the Iraqis felt they had to hide their national treasures in the first pace. And that it was only this distrust of incoming American forces that saved many books and artifacts.

It does not speak well of our administartion or the ability of our armed forces to keep the peace, that those who hid the books and artifacts were justified in their fears that the Americans would allow these buildings to be looted or destroyed.

Too bad the directors of the Tuwaitha Nuclear Facility weren't equally foresighted.

Not to mention the Bush administration. They're not off the hook, regardless of what war apologists may say about this bit of good news.

Sure, Andy....

An equally obvious possibility -- the museum curators and archeologists all over the world already knew what to expect because of previous destruction and looting during the first Gulf War, including Basra's bombing in 1991. (Basra is considered to be the site of the Garden of Eden and Adam's tree.)

I knew about the flooded vault for quite a while; nonetheless, I feared that there was not enough time to stash away the Museum artifacts. I'm cheering the good news that so much has been recovered. I especially like your "these are not the droids you are looking for" explanation. Nice and cheeky. ;)

...um, my calculator keeps saying "Error." I blame the liberal media and the permissive mathematics of the post-Clinton era.

There is also a bit of a philosophical question about the "conquest" of Iraq. Just what does that mean? I would think that it means securing critical parts of the country -- Government offices, infrastructure sites (power plants, hospitals), etc., so that the Bad Guys can't use them or destroy them. It looks like the army came into Baghdad looking for an army to fight, and, when it didn't find one, just sort of wandered around aimlessly.

Well, look. I'm perfectly willing to say the museum story-- by itself-- reflects the loss of things, rather than people, and while thankfully less significant than first thought, should be viewed accordingly.

Then again, we did manage to kill at least 3,000 Iraqi civilians in this exercise, we failed to secure hospitals, power and water systems, WMDs and WMD sites, and amazingly, amazingly, did not secure the one thing Rummy (alldgedly) DID want to secure-- huge amounts of the oil industry infrastructure. (Of course, think of all the needs that can now be filled by Bechtel and Halliburton-- no really, think of them-- that's what this war was fought for).

Let me make this easy. People who OPPOSED everything Bush said and did so for no other reason than just because the compulsive- pathological-liar Bush said it are RIGHT; everyone else, no matter how smug and self-satisfied, is just wrong. As to the museum looting story, just think of Rummy's statement about the vase as one of the highlights of the Bush Administration, and you realize whch side of this argument owes the apologies to whom.

I noted how AS tried to abreviate the 3033 figure to 33, using the same logic that would be applied to discounting the theft of da Vinci's sketches and notebooks if the thieves had also netted the Mona Lisa in the same haul.

I find it at once apalling and highly entertaining that the Season 7 opening of Stargate yesterday showed more erudition and knowledge of archeology than the Bush administration or any of their little friends. One of the plot cruxes was that the crucial McGuffin holding valuable scientific data had been misclassified as a "decorative object" and packed away in the museum's warehouse for minor knick-knacks.

How many of those 3000 "minor" knick-knacks were, in fact, misidentified masterpieces, or held fragments of crucial data? I believe King Tut's tomb was only found because Carter found a souvenir cup from his wedding feast tucked away in the Cairo museum's warehouse. That's not "main display area" (where Tut's sarcophagous is now) but the warehouse for the so-called "lesser" treasures.

Easter Lemming Liberal News Digest
http://elemming2.blogspot.com

Regardon the appalling description mentioned above:

http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/docs/nat.html

"IRAQ MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS, ARCHIVES, & LIBRARIES SITUATION REPORT

" 8 June 2003

"Nabil Al-Tikriti [naltikriti@hotmail.com]

" University of Chicago

"[This report was originally distributed by e-mail and posted on the IraqCrisis
list. It is published here with the kind permission of the author.]"

"The events described in this report began at least two days after the 8 April entry of US troops into Baghdad and continued for several days -- until international media attention appears to have forced a policy change.
Although insufficient US forces were committed to control the entire city, the forces at hand were capable of providing security to any facility they
were ordered to protect.... Most of the facilities covered in this report were concentrated in two small areas which had a sufficient US troop presence (i.e. 2-3 tank crews) in the area to prevent the events described below. When US soldiers were asked to protect the facilities in question, the invariable
response was either that 93we are soldiers not policemen,94 or that 93our orders
do not extend to protecting this facility.94

[The discussion of the looting of 22 trunks of documents and burning of 10 trunks of the Awqaf collection, is particularly indicting of US dismissiveness/malfeasance and failure to provide protection which US archaeologists begged for weeks ahead of the invasion, and which Iraqi archaelogists and concerned citizens asked for....]

"Is it just me or are too many people in the media graduates of the Indiana Jones School of Archeology? While the "big" artifacts are the attention getters, the really important stuff, from a scientific standpoint, are the smaller everyday items, and, especially, all those cuneiform tablets. Also, as important as the artifact itself is the documentation as to exactly where it was found."

I address these very points on my blog. The general public (sadly) probably wouldn't show the same level of interest in a few "unimportant potsherds" as it would something like the missing gold harp or Nefertiti's mummy. However, the "big" things are getting the issue necessary media coverage. I wish the coverage was not so politically tainted, but at least people are getting some exposure to ancient near eastern cultures that they otherwise would not have had. I suspect that archeologists may also need to rely on wealthy Indiana Jones wannabes for some of their funding. I would hope that it would take more than an "exciting" find to pique interest.

I'd write to the editor, but to steal one of my father's navy phrases, it would be like shoveling shit against the tide.

Maybe I'll feel more inspired tomorrow.

With e-mail, it's easier and faster to do what used to be a fairly odious chore, and most any of us can write a pithy epistle without our lips getting tired. It's time to fight the astroturf. (So sez Mister One Letter So Far.)

Atrios, I figure Sullivan is a member of the freeperati. The small swarming followers who turn up in our comments threads saying "What you people have obviously failed to understand --" are freepi.

I tried to post a comment about this in your weblog, but couldn't -- some kind of technical problem affecting several other weblogs as well as yours -- so I've switched to a different browser; but your weblog moves so fast that the time for a comment there has passed.

Dave, the crew that saved the library did the moving and stashing themselves. I can't blame the guys at Tuwaitha for not doing the same. The worst you'll get out of overexposure to old documents is an allergic reaction.

Scott: Cripes, you're right -- googling on "freepi" does turn up sites about shagging animals. Who knew?

Lightning and others: Like you, I'm uncomfortable with this oddly precise determination that 33 of the artifacts were priceless and 3,000 were of lesser value. That's the language of art dealers, not archaeologists.

This may or may not turn out to be relevant, but I keep noticing these disturbing little bits and hints of connections between Bush & Co. and the high end of the international art and antiquities trade. Maybe so, maybe not. The more important point is that we're the only ones who're in a position to protect Iraqi antiquities from wholesale looting, and we're not minding the store.

This is all too predictable. A few years ago, when we were visiting Jane Yolen and David Stemple in St. Andrews, Scotland, Patrick and I went with them to an exclusive antiques show: ticketholders only, heavy security, high-end merchandise. Not something we'd done before, but very interesting. At one point Patrick was trailing along behind an antique dealer who was telling some friends about a recent trip to Yugoslavia. The guy had nipped in right after some of the worst of the violence, and was full of tales of the great antiques to be had at rock-bottom prices from the newly impoverished and shell-shocked locals.

Patrick said he'd had a momentary urge to pick up one of the very expensive nearby objects and bash in the guy's head.

As I said in one of my posts about looting, back in April, every society has people who only behave when they think misbehavior will be detected and punished. Part of the work of civilization is minimizing the incidence of such people, and another part is protecting everyone else from their depredations.

If you demolish the existing systems for maintaining social order, and make it clear that you're not going to take responsibililty in your turn, you effectively give those people permission to loot, pillage, trespass, despoil, vandalize, and commit all manner violence and molestation.

We made this our problem the minute we invaded. When you take over a country, you inherit all the problems and complexities of governing it. If we weren't prepared to do that, we should never have crossed the border.

Of course, those stations -- Paramount/Viacom -- perpetrating him upon the airwaves, I rather doubt will EVER provide a retration or rebuttal time or acknowledge any obligation or relevance for correcting his untruthful calumny....

"Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses."

Freedom of speech belongs to those with the information mass distribution systems....

Rummy to the school children of America: Sorry kids, the Air and Space Museum is closed because someone stole the Spirit of Saint Luis, the Wright Flyer and Apollo 11. But hay, they were just old junk anyway. Who wants a ride in my SUV?

This shameless disregard alone shouldl be considdered a crime against humanity.