ma1939

Baghdad's national museum was plundered to the bone. This is without a doubt one of greatest crimes perpetrated in the history of mankind. Does anyone honestly believe the military didn't anticipate this would happen? Even if they didn't, they should be held accountable for their lack of foresight and callous insensitivity. I would have preferred that Baghdad be ceremoniously handed over to the Taliban; I'll wager the antiquities would have fared much better. The only other event in modern history that even remotely compares to this is the destruction of Dresden.

Bush, Blair, and Israel, this is your work.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ed_treasures_7

Beer God

Slight exaggeration....

Happy Wonderer

Well, the Taliban did blow up some extremely old and famous Buddhist statues. But looting the museum is pretty horrible as well.

hw

Farren

Mark, while I agree this is not a good thing, I think your comparisons suffer from a severe case of hyperbole. This doesn't remotely compare to Dresden

Gurdur

To add to Farren's point above:

Neither did Israel have anything to do with it.

As for comparisons:

Since I still get upset over the way the West supported Idi Amin while he was in power, and certain countries in the West supported the genocidal Hutu rgime in Rwanda, and I can remember the looting of the Kampala Ugandan National Library, let alone the murder of millions of Rwandans, Ugandans and Congolese, and I remember the events in Kampuchea, while I deeply regret the looting of the Baghdad museum, I think too much rhetoric simply is self-destructive.

Sakpo

The loss of this museum is simply one of the greatest non human losses humanity may have ever faced (I hope it's not as bad as it looks and I am exagerating). No, it doesn't stack up to any of the mass killings humanity has engaged in but it still strikes me as one of the worlds great tragedies. They should have sent fucking troops to protect this stuff from the outset if they were going to invade. It should have been part of the war plans from the start.

This is one of the great crimes of history, right there with the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Vicar Philip

Reading about the loss of so many treasures of Iraq's history makes my stomach queasy. I agree with Sakpo. Why the hell wasn't this museum guarded? Imagine how we'd feel if looters broke in and stole the Constitution.

Sakpo

Yes, and it's not just Iraq's history, it's really world history. The cradle of civilization and all that.

joedad

I think this demonstrates a serious lack of planning and awareness. Real amateurish sh*t actually. Bush and Company probably just don't appreciate the value of such things. Sad but true.

As for our Constitution, that will happen with Operation Native American Freedom when the Chinese and the Russians liberate all Siberian Americans a few centuries from now.

Iamthebeerking

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