spurly

It seems to me that the US military is not in Iraq to guard Iraq's national treasures - we are there to free the Iraqi people and to save lives. Protecting artifacts in a museum does not fall under either one of those headings.

Kevin

Gurdur

Naaaaaw, just the Oil Ministry

Naaaaw, just the oil industry.

Since I've already pointed out in this thread that the USA is in contravention of the Geneva Convention by not providing law and order in a city and region it has occupied and destroyed all other competeing forces,, perhaps you'ld care to comment on that ?


I'ld be quite happy even if you only spoke about responsibility.

Monkeybot

Spurly, it is our responsibility as the occupying forces to ensure civil order -- that includes stopping rioters and looters. How the heck are we supposed to enact "regime change" if we can't even stop people from burning down a friggin museum? :banghead:


edit: oops, i should've read ahead -- Gurdur said it better

Jesse

Misso:
The destruction of the statues by the Taliban might have been official government policy, but policy of a government that is recognized by no country, save Pakistan. So that means that in Afghanistan, too, it was a minority that destroyed artifacts, just like in Iraq.

I agree, I didn't mean to imply the Afghani people should be held responsible for the actions of the Taliban. My point was just that there was a specific organization taking responsibility for the destruction of statues, whereas in Iraq it's just disorganized mobs of people that think they can get away with it.

Misso:
And what excactly is a minority? Are there any numbers of the amount of people looting?

I thought I read a source somewhere that estimated that the looters were somewhere in the single-digits in terms of percentage of Baghdad's population, but I can't find the source, and I might be misremembering (or the estimate might have been wrong).

Vorkosigan

This appears to have been round two of another, more immediately relevant, dispute about how many troops are needed to win this war. In this case, the military prevailed over the original civilian notion that fewer than 100,000 could do it. As even more soldiers rush to the Gulf to bring the number closer to 300,000, the original Rumsfeld plan looks in hindsight to be what the army said at the time: a recipe for possible catastrophe.

From a post back in February:

"Another study done in 1995 examines the troop commitment required to occupy Iraq:

Force Requirements in Stability Operations. The study integrates issues ranging from the size of the population of the occupied state to the shrinking duration of force commitments in the modern era.

"The populations of many countries are now large enough to strain the ability of the American military to provide stabilizing forces unilaterally at even modest per capita force ratios. Many countries have populations so large that the United States could participate in their stabilization only through multilateral forces that bring together major force contributions from a large number of countries. And we must finally acknowledge that many countries are simply too big to be plausible candidates for stabilization by external forces."

Running three scenarios using his numbers, and assuming Iraq has a population of 22 million, this yields a "base" of 22,000 thousands for calculations.

At 1-4 per thousand, that's 22,000 - 88,000 US troops, minimum. That's the normal ratio of police officers in peaceful western countries.

at four to ten per thousand, that's 88,000 to 220,000 troops. "Ongoing operations [in 1995] in India's Punjab state against Sikh militants deploy a security force of about 115,000 (regular troops, paramilitary security formations, and police) to secure a population of about 20.2 million, giving a force ratio of 5.7 per thousand." Note that this is similar in size to Iraq's population, and the situation is similar.

However, force ratios above 10 per thousand are, in this analysis, used in insurgencies where there is a high level of terrorism, like Britain against the Malaya insurgency and in N. Ireland.

Which one are we looking at here? My gut says somewhere between the medium and high scenario, with troop commitments in excess of 200,000, if we do all the work. That is highly unrealistic, given our finances and our deployment demands, so the occupation force is going to be multinational. Far from sweeping across the Middle East, unless allies back us, Iraq will be impossible to manage."

Optional

One thing to keep in mind here is that the numbers quoted should be actual combat arms troops, preferrably with a high ratio of MPs.

A USA combat arms force of 200,000 would probably mean a total force of one to two million.

-me

Autonemesis

That was my thought, too. This loss is right up there with any of the Great Sackings of history, including Alexandria.

There are accounts that seem to show the US encouraged general looting intentionally, as part of the war plans to complete the disintegration of the old Iraqi government. However, the Oil Ministry and Interior Ministry buildings have been well-guarded by US tanks, as have been most oil production facilities.

http://wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/iraq-a15.shtml

elwoodblues

Just a quick update on this, in case you missed it...

33 key pieces missing, not 170,000

Apparently, the museum housed 170,000 pieces in total. Of those, 3,000 were missing. More to the point, of the 8,000 world class pices, 47 were taken. 33 of those are still missing.

It's still bad, yes. But it's not the huge, earth shattering crime against history that will echo down the ages that it was originally made out to be.

Danya

Yeah, right. OH...Did I say 170,000? I meant 33...SHEESE. Those were tears of relief I was crying..HAHHAHA...All this time you actually thought we lost everything? Even the Silver harp of Ur and the first known writings of man? No way! If only I'd been aware of your confusion this could have been cleared up months ago. Oh well, all's well that ends well.

I don't think so. There is something really wrong with this story. Not only the fact that the original source was someone other than this guy who shows up months later and says it was all some silly misunderstanding. Add to that the fact that Rumsfeld and others in the Administration would be making sure their names were cleared and using this as an opportunity to show their critics how things are always hyped up and you can't believe everything you see or read and if people were just patient they would see everything's going great blah, blah, blah. I hope I'm just being cynical but I'm not buying it. Just compare the stories:

Telegraph