Iraqi Antiquities Summit
Comments: 2
God knows what they’re planning to do to try to reassemble what they can of the collections, but any effort at all has to be appreciated.
Iraqi antiquities summit meets
Representatives from some of the world’s leading museums are meeting at the British Museum in London on Tuesday to discuss how to help museums and archaeologists in Iraq.
Thousands of priceless and irreplaceable objects are still missing from museums there in the looting that followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein by American-led forces.
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2003.04.29 (Tue) • 13:55
Comments
Posted by Thomas 2003.05.09, 13:30
This is a little exchange I had with John Gibson of FOX News’ “Big Story.” I suppose Herr Gib has given up.
When they are on TV, you have to hit them in the ego. I sent it to Media Whores Online and as commentary against FCC deregulation. Use it wherever you can. Chronology is bottom to top.(No reply to #8) Original#8
Why is it so hard for you to answer a simple question? You missed the entire point. The number, value and significance of the missing pieces are still not known and other sites have yet to be heard from. There was more than just the National Museum and Library. It was just dumb luck that it was not much worse. Someone could have brought a generator and forced the director to open the vault. Imagine what world opinion would have been if there had been live coverage of our troops protecting museums and libraries instead of only Halliburton contracts! Just remember this next time you conservatives try to appoint yourselves as guardians of culture. And thanks for illustrating your own lack of intellectual integrity.
Thomas Blaney
(No reply to #7) Original#7 I read the damned wires too and you still refuse to answer the question.
Just to prove it here is the last paragraph of the AP story -
Franks said he doesn’t expect to find an organized network of thieves as some art experts have suggested. “We’re apt to find where an individual person decided he or she could take some of the antiquities and save them for a rainy day,” he said in the follow-up interview. “We’re going to get some more from looters — someone who knew someone who stole something. We’re getting it back that way.” -
The fact remains that all pleas for protection were ignored and it was only luck that the losses were not much worse. Is this policy good enough for you?
Thomas Blaney
Reply to #6: check the wires. it was a bogus story from day one. the iraqis either removed antiquities for safekeeping or stole them way before the u.s. was in baghdad.
gib
——-Original Message——-#6 From: Thomas Blaney To: Show -My Word Sent: 5/5/2003 2:01 AM Subject: Re: Gibson’s big hair
I insist on an answer. Was it a mistake to have no plan and make no effort to prevent the looting of cultural treasures? Should this policy apply for the next war too?
There is no question that catastrophic losses were sustained. It will be months before an accurate accounting can be made. Why? Because all the basic equipment for productive work was looted too! It is fortunate that the losses are not quite as complete as first feared, but that is no thanks to what we should have done before the fact.
Clearly there were not enough troops to maintain order and the Rumsfeld doctrine has serious flaws. Apparently Chalabi had his way with the Pentagon. The Jordanians say he is a con-artist. Maybe they are right.
Thomas Blaney
(No reply to #5)
Original#5
I can only surmise by your silence that:A. You are hung over from yesterday’s mother of all celebrations and this topic is already ancient news in the attention span of the only audience you care about. (I can promise you it will be remembered far longer than G.W. Bush, and I did not notice the bad ENRON and TYCO news buried in all the hoopla.)
B. You have run out of waffles and denials and cannot muster the intellectual honesty to admit that we made any mistakes in this war.
I am one of those rare self confessed liberals you are looking for, who came to support the war before it began and already agree with most of the points you make. I will even go you one better and say that the admission by Tariq Aziz and other former officials that the last WMD’s were destroyed during the run-up to the war is sufficient proof that they existed and the the real threat of war was necessary and it was their delays and denials that made it inevitable.
Let’s now honor the military tradition of learning from past mistakes. Were any mistakes made? I do not allow other journalists to do my thinking, so let’s just connect the dots of the simple, known facts:
- More than adequate information with requests for protection of specific cultural treasures was provided through proper channels at every level with sufficient time for planning.
- The war was conducted totally on our timetable.
- When the cities fell and the “predicted” looting and chaos began, by Ba’athist thugs, poor people, opportunists, Fedayeen, take your pick, or all of the above for whatever reasons, the only institution we had plans to protect was the Oil Ministry.
- Catastrophic cultural losses of inestimable value were incurred at the specified sites.
- The senior U.S. official for cultural affairs resigned in protest.
No one disputes that there are insufficient forces to maintain civil order and only now are thousands of MP’s and peacekeeping forces being rounded up and sent to Iraq that should have been there and ready over a month ago.
The only question now is - Was it a mistake to have no plan whatever to protect cultural sites? And, - In the next war, should we plan to protect important cultural sites, or just demonstrate our utter contempt by showing they are not worth a single drop of American blood? Is it possible that no mistakes were made? Mein Gott Herr Gib, we truly are SUPER HUMANS!!!
Thomas Blaney
Reply to #4: i read the left wing press. i already know what the right wingers say. you don’t even bother to read the daily press and catch up on stuff like the museum looting. try it.
gib
——-Original Message——-#4 From: Thomas Blaney To: Show -My Word Sent: 5/1/2003 3:13 PM Subject: Re: Gibson’s big hair
Just read what I said. I supported the war, but it was negligent not to place as much value on cultural treasures as we did on the oil ministry. Rumsfeld said that the looting was predictable, yet by abandoning the Powell doctrine and warring on the cheap without enough troops on the ground, we made no effort to prevent it. I grew up in Brazil under a military dictatorship that tortured and killed people and obviously the world is better off without Saddam. When you jack-boot journalists are incapable of recognizing any of our failures, you just fuel the fires of anti-Americanism. If you read something other than the right-wing press, you might have a clue.
Thomas BlaneyReply to #3: right. i burned the library? you still can’t bring yourself to blame the baathist thugs who tortured and killed people and then burned everything to either cover their tracks or to satisfy their fit of pique? so instead you just shout names.. illiterate uber patriots? that’s clever but it’s also wrong. evidently that doesn’t bother you.
i repeat. read the papers.
gib
——-Original Message——-#3 From: Thomas Blaney To: Show -My Word Sent: 5/1/2003 1:53 PM Subject: Re: Gibson’s big hair
If only it were as bogus as your show! Even if some of the pieces are recovered, all the records and academic research on them is lost too. I suppose the burned out library is bogus as well to you illiterate uber-patriots.
Thomas BlaneyReply to #2: c’mon, the museum looting story turned out to be bogus or close to it. read the papers…
gib
——-Original Message——-#2 From: Thomas Blaney To: Show -My Word Sent: 4/30/2003 8:26 PM Subject: Re: Gibson’s big hair
Thanks for confirming my perception. I was one of those liberals who supported and defended the war after resolution 1441, and yes, the troops did a magnificent job. Not many noticed that the flag on the statue was upside down! A distress signal and a mistake that marines simply do not make. It may well result in enormous good, provided we can recover from the failure to plan for the “predictable” aftermath —Rumsfeld’s words. The military outcome was never in doubt. This was the most powerful military in history against, in their words, “the world’s worst general.” Gloating is now only turning the world against the American people and not just the administration. If we truly wanted to convince people we believe in the rule of law, we would hand Chalabi over to Jordan. All that will be remembered hundreds of years from now will be the loss of those “artifacts” that represent our common history and that it resulted from a value judgment made by Christians. — A crime against humanity, no excuses.
Thomas Blaneyreply to #1: it’s all whining, and conveniently ignoring the fact it was a quick war that did the world an enormous amount of good.
gib
——-Original Message——-#1 From: Thomas Blaney To: myword@foxnews.com Sent: 4/30/2003 6:17 PM Subject: Gibson’s big hair
John Gibson’s ridiculously big hair conceals a similarly small intellect. It was amusing to watch him fall all over himself defending the indefensible lack of post-war planning by Rumsfeld and Franks. This war took longer than even they anticipated. Having more forces on the ground would clearly have prevented much of the looting and chaos, including the looting of weapons at unguarded military caches. Iraq now looks like an ad for the NRA. There must be Crimes Against Humanity charges for the irreplaceable culture lost due to inexcusable negligence. The costs of “War on the Cheap” are now far greater and more dangerous.
Thomas Blaney Oklahoma City
Posted by utah 2003.10.26, 05:42
how can you even expect to be taken seriously when you start your message with an attack on someone’s personal appearance in order to belittle them; someone you know basically nothing about and obviously someone who has a much higher iq than you, i’d be willing to wager.
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