Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Sauron · 04-13-2003, 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Sakpo
Of course the looters are to blame as well, but when it comes to any single organized entity, I blame the United States government. Imagine you come home from work to notice your home has totally ransacked and destroyed. You call the police, and they tell you that yes, they'd had good information that your home was going to be broken into, looted, and vandalized, but they didn't think it was worth sending anybody out to prevent it. Wouldn't you say the police were at fault as well, without absolving the burglars of their guilt?

Indeed. We most certainly are to blame for the looting - we removed the existing control/restraint, and failed to replace them with a new control/restraint.

It's the USA that said we were going to liberate the Iraqi people (even though they didn't ask us to).

And it's the USA that said we were going to get rid of the Baathist regime.

And it's the USA that set itself up as the mighty eradicator of terrorism and the bringer of democracy and freedom.

Well if that's the theatrical role that Dubya, Wolfowitz and Rumsfield have cast the USA into, then by god, the USA needs to start *acting* that way. Dubya wanted to be the glorious hero and liberator, then get in there and start acting the part - no excuses or rationalizations for poor planning or being ignorant of the scope of the task that you've set for yourself.

I'm so ashamed to be American lately......

fatherphil · 04-13-2003, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mark Alinsky
I would have preferred that Baghdad be ceremoniously handed over to the Taliban; I'll wager the antiquities would have fared much better.

do a quick search of "taliban destroys shrine" to see how ironic this statement is.

i suppose they would have respected the antiquities they felt like, but really. look at it this way, the people of iraq are just taking ownership of what rightfully belongs to them and protecting it from the imperial american aggressors. yeah, thats it.

sir drinks-a-lot · 04-13-2003, 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by fatherphil
do a quick search of "taliban destroys shrine" to see how ironic this statement is.

i suppose they would have respected the antiquities they felt like, but really. look at it this way, the people of iraq are just taking ownership of what rightfully belongs to them and protecting it from the imperial american aggressors. yeah, thats it.

LOL! I think you meant to say the jingoistic, imperialistic, cowboy, sabre-rattling, dick-swinging, war mongering, etc, etc...Amerikkkan aggressors!

Danya · 04-13-2003, 11:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Theli
Danya...
From what I've seen the coalition soldiers are still fighting Saddam's military (along with other nutbags), why not blame them?

Wasn't the oil protected from people trying to set it aflame? not so much from looting.

Back to the museum, is the US sole responsible for it being looted?

I don't put all of the blame on the soldiers, although there have been some stories reporting that they were nearby, knew about it, and allowed it to continue. I blame the planning and leadership in not doing anything about dealing with this before it became such a crises and still not doing anything about it now. It will continue until it dies down on it's own simply because there is nothing of value left anywhere in Iraq.

About the oil...I am not talking about the oil fields and rigs but the building that ran the business of selling the oil. The office and paperwork itself could have been replaced. They protected that paperwork and let priceless history that's been around thousands of years disappear within 48 hours. Of course they also protected the oil fields themselves and that was from day one...this was to be expected. But the ministry building did not have anything priceless inside that could not have been replaced yet that was the only building protected from looting with tanks and soldiers. They could spare it for that...but not for hospitals or priceless history.

And YES BUSH KNEW about it ahead of time because he was petitioned by the curators and others to protect it from war. So what that it wasn't bombed if we still allowed it to be destroyed. It's our war and the way it was planned and is even now being carried out is a crime.

Jane Bovary · 04-13-2003, 11:38 PM

I'm not even convinced that Dubya & Co. knew that such artifacts even existed. I mean, we're talking about one of the least educated and poorly traveled men to ever sit in the White House. What are the chances that he or anyone around him was even remotely aware of the debt that civilization owes to the Fertile Crescent?
Sauron

Are you saying the President of the United States is an ignorant philistine...?!

And YES BUSH KNEW about it ahead of time because he was petitioned by the curators and others to protect it from war.
Danya

Then he MUST a philistine. What other explanation can there be for this failure to protect the museum?

Danya · 04-14-2003, 12:05 AM

You may call him a Philistine but the words I use to describe him are generally a little more obscene and I'm trying to be ladylike tonight so won't include them here.

Anyway, according to this U.K. article written on November 7, 2002 he knew about all of the historic sites and was petitioned to protect them from any coming war. He may not have destroyed the museum with his bombs but he did destroy it with his negligence...as he has done with so many things since his arrival to our Whitehouse.

As the threat of war grows, archaeologists make plea to spare Iraq's treasures

Jane Bovary · 04-14-2003, 12:08 AM

I agree completely Danya...and I'm not too ladylike to call him a FUCKING philistine.

kwigibo · 04-14-2003, 12:28 AM

I've heard word Philistine is going to be liberated next

Jesse · 04-14-2003, 12:35 AM

Scorned general's tactics proved right

Quote:

Officially, he is Tommy Franks's superior, head of the United States army, a member of the mighty joint chiefs, and two months away from what ought to be honoured retirement at the end of a military career stretching back to the Vietnam war.

But for the past two years Gen Shinseki has been in total eclipse after what appears to have been the most spectacular bust-up with his civilian bosses, in particular Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary.

Hardly any of this the reached public domain until last month when Gen Shinseki told a congressional committee that he thought an occupying force in the hundreds of thousands would be required to police postwar Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld publicly repudiated him, saying he was "far off the mark".

In semi-private, the Pentagon's civilian leadership was far more scathing. A "senior administration official" told the Village Voice newspaper that Gen Shinseki's remark was "bullshit from a Clintonite enamoured of using the army for peacekeeping and not winning wars".

Then the general said it again. "It could be as high as several hundred thousand," he told another committee. "We all hope it is something less." Most of the media were too distracted by the build-up to war to notice. Serious analysts, however, were staggered by the insubordination.

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.

Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure

Quote:

The National Museum of Iraq recorded a history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters.

The full extent of the disaster that befell the museum came to light only today, as the frenzied looting that swept much of the capital over the previous three days began to ebb.

As fires in a dozen government ministries and agencies began to burn out, and as looters tired of pillaging in the 90-degree heat, museum officials reached the hotels where foreign journalists were staying along the eastern bank of the Tigris River. They brought word of what is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history.

A full accounting of what has been lost may take weeks or months. The museum had been closed during much of the 1990's, and as with many Iraqi institutions, its operations were cloaked in secrecy under Mr. Hussein.

So what officials told journalists today may have to be adjusted as a fuller picture comes to light. It remains unclear whether some of the museum's priceless gold, silver and copper antiquities, some of its ancient stone and ceramics and perhaps some of its fabled bronzes and gold-overlaid ivory, had been locked away for safekeeping elsewhere before the looting, or seized for private display in one of Mr. Hussein's myriad palaces.

What was beyond contest today was that the 28 galleries of the museum and vaults with huge steel doors guarding storage chambers that descend floor after floor into unlighted darkness had been completely ransacked.

Officials with crumpled spirits fought back tears and anger at American troops, as they ran down an inventory of the most storied items that they said had been carried away by the thousands of looters who poured into the museum after daybreak on Thursday and remained until dusk on Friday, with only one intervention by American forces, lasting about half an hour, at lunchtime on Thursday.

Nothing remained, museum officials said, at least nothing of real value, from a museum that had been regarded by archaeologists and other specialists as perhaps the richest of all such institutions in the Middle East.

...

Mr. Muhammad said that he had found an American Abrams tank in Museum Square, about 300 yards away, and that five marines had followed him back into the museum and opened fire above the looters' heads. That drove several thousand of the marauders out of the museum complex in minutes, he said, but when the tank crewmen left about 30 minutes later, the looters returned.

"I asked them to bring their tank inside the museum grounds," he said. "But they refused and left. About half an hour later, the looters were back, and they threatened to kill me, or to tell the Americans that I am a spy for Saddam Hussein's intelligence, so that the Americans would kill me. So I was frightened, and I went home."

Mohsen Hassan, a 56-year-old deputy curator, returned to the museum on Saturday afternoon after visiting military commanders a mile away at the Palestine Hotel, with a request that American troops be placed in the museum to protect the building and items left by the looters in the vaults. Mr. Hassan said the American officers had given him no assurances that they would guard the museum around the clock, but other American commanders announced later in the day that joint patrols with unarmed Iraqi police units would begin as early as Sunday in an attempt to prevent further looting.

Mr. Hassan, who said he had spent 34 years helping to develop the museum's collection, described watching as men took sledgehammers to locked glass display cases and in some instances fired rifles and pistols to break the locks.

He said that many of the looters appeared to be from the impoverished districts of the city where anger at Mr. Hussein ran at its strongest, but that others were middle-class people who appeared to know exactly what they were looking for.

"Did some of them know the value of what they took?" he said. "Absolutely, they did. They knew what the most valued pieces in our collection were."

Mr. Muhammad spoke with deep bitterness toward the Americans, as have many Iraqis who have watched looting that began with attacks on government agencies and the palaces and villas of Mr. Hussein, his family and his inner circle broaden into a tidal wave of looting that struck just about every government institution, even ministries dealing with issues like higher education, trade and agriculture, and hospitals.

American troops have intervened only sporadically, as they did on Friday to halt a crowd of men and boys who were raiding an armory at the edge of the Republican Palace presidential compound and taking brand-new Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.

American commanders have said they lack the troops to curb the looting while their focus remains on the battles across Baghdad that are necessary to mop up pockets of resistance from paramilitary forces loyal to Mr. Hussein.

...

Mr. Muhammad, the archaeologist, directed much of his anger at President Bush. "A country's identity, its value and civilization resides in its history," he said. "If a country's civilization is looted, as ours has been here, its history ends. Please tell this to President Bush. Please remind him that he promised to liberate the Iraqi people, but that this is not a liberation, this is a humiliation."

MrDarwin · 04-14-2003, 05:59 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by MrDarwin
I agree, Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, and no, I'm not being facetious. So... now what? Do we invade North Korea? How about China? How about Saudi Arabia, ostensibly one of our allies? All these countries have abysmal human rights records.

It looks like Syria is next, now that Bush is claiming they have "weapons of mass destruction". Well, maybe they do, maybe they don't. But gosh darn it, we're just going to keep invading countries until we find some! (Anybody want to take bets on how long until Bush starts linking Syria to Sept. 11?)

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04-13-2003, 11:38 PM	#55
Jane Bovary Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: The Fatal Shore Posts: 900	I'm not even convinced that Dubya & Co. knew that such artifacts even existed. I mean, we're talking about one of the least educated and poorly traveled men to ever sit in the White House. What are the chances that he or anyone around him was even remotely aware of the debt that civilization owes to the Fertile Crescent? Sauron Are you saying the President of the United States is an ignorant philistine...?! And YES BUSH KNEW about it ahead of time because he was petitioned by the curators and others to protect it from war. Danya Then he MUST a philistine. What other explanation can there be for this failure to protect the museum?

04-14-2003, 12:05 AM	#56
Danya Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: USA Posts: 638	You may call him a Philistine but the words I use to describe him are generally a little more obscene and I'm trying to be ladylike tonight so won't include them here. Anyway, according to this U.K. article written on November 7, 2002 he knew about all of the historic sites and was petitioned to protect them from any coming war. He may not have destroyed the museum with his bombs but he did destroy it with his negligence...as he has done with so many things since his arrival to our Whitehouse. As the threat of war grows, archaeologists make plea to spare Iraq's treasures

04-14-2003, 12:08 AM	#57
Jane Bovary Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: The Fatal Shore Posts: 900	I agree completely Danya...and I'm not too ladylike to call him a FUCKING philistine.

04-14-2003, 12:28 AM	#58
kwigibo Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Gold Coast, QLD, Australia Posts: 5,814	I've heard word Philistine is going to be liberated next

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