do read last Para. Time to correct the record re. the pillaged Museum in Baghdad. See this article in the (liberal) Guardian.

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Munro, Neil" <nmunro () nationaljournal com>
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 14:06:40 -0400
To: "'dave () farber net'" <dave () farber net>
Subject: Time to correct the recrod re. the pillaged Museum in Baghdad. Se e
this article in the (liberal) Guardian.


It was a hoax. Many were suckered. Read it and weep for all those who
weeped. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,974193,00.html

- Neil 



Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth

David Aaronovitch
Tuesday June 10, 2003
The Guardian 


Civilians inspect Torah scrolls stored in the vault of the National Museum
in Baghdad
 When, back in mid-April, the news first arrived of the looting at the Iraqi
National Museum in Baghdad, words hardly failed anyone. No fewer than
170,000 items had, it was universally reported, been stolen or destroyed,
representing a large proportion of Iraq's tangible culture. And it had all
happened as some US troops stood by and watched, and others had guarded the
oil ministry. 

Professors wrote articles. Professor Michalowski of Michigan argued that
this was "a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the
Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington DC had been wiped out
in one fell swoop". Professor Zinab Bahrani from Columbia University claimed
that, "By April 12 the entire museum had been looted," and added, "Blame
must be placed with the Bush administration for a catastrophic destruction
of culture unparalleled in modern history." From Edinburgh Professor Trevor
Watkins lamented that, "The loss of Iraq's cultural heritage will go down in
history - like the burning of the Library at Alexandria - and Britain and
the US will be to blame." Others used phrases such as cultural genocide and
compared the US in particular to the Mongol invaders of 13th-century Iraq.

Back in Baghdad there was anger. On April 14, Dr Donny George, the museum's
director of research, was distraught. The museum had housed the leading
collection of the continuous history of mankind, "And it's gone, and it's
lost. If Marines had started [protecting the museum] before, none of this
would have happened. It's too late. It's no use. It's no use."

A few weeks later - in London to address a meeting at the British Museum -
George was interviewed for this newspaper by Neal Ascherson. George, said
Ascherson, did not throw blame around, but did remark that most of the
looters responsible for the damage were not educated.

On June 1, George was reported in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag as
reiterating that witnesses had seen US soldiers enter the museum on April 9,
stay inside two hours and leave with some objects. When asked whether he
believed that the US military and international art thieves had been acting
in concert, George replied that a year earlier, at a meeting in a London
restaurant, someone (unnamed) had told him that he couldn't wait till he
could go inside the National Museum with US soldiers and give it a good
pillage - ie, yes. 

So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under
the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only
problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's
bollocks. 

Not all of it, of course. There was some looting and damage to a small
number of galleries and storerooms, and that is grievous enough. But over
the past six weeks it has gradually become clear that most of the objects
which had been on display in the museum galleries were removed before the
war. Some of the most valuable went into bank vaults, where they were
discovered last week. Eight thousand more have been found in 179 boxes
hidden "in a secret vault". And several of the larger and most remarked
items seem to have been spirited away long before the Americans arrived in
Baghdad. 

George is now quoted as saying that that items lost could represent "a small
percentage" of the collection and blamed shoddy reporting for the
exaggeration. 

"There was a mistake," he said. "Someone asked us what is the number of
pieces in the whole collection. We said over 170,000, and they took that as
the number lost. Reporters came in and saw empty shelves and reached the
conclusion that all was gone. But before the war we evacuated all of the
small pieces and emptied the showcases except for fragile or heavy material
that was difficult to move."

This indictment of world journalism has caused some surprise to those who
listened to George and others speak at the British Museum meeting. One art
historian, Dr Tom Flynn, now speaks of his "great bewilderment". "Donny
George himself had ample opportunity to clarify to the best of [his]
knowledge the extent of the looting and the likely number of missing
objects," says Flynn. "Is it not a little strange that quite so many
journalists went away with the wrong impression, while Mr George made little
or not attempt to clarify the context of the figure of 170,000 which he
repeated with such regularity and gusto before, during, and after that
meeting." To Flynn it is also odd that George didn't seem to know that
pieces had been taken into hiding or evacuated. "There is a queasy subtext
here if you bother to seek it out," he suggests.

On Sunday night, in a remarkable programme on BBC2, the architectural
historian Dan Cruikshank both sought and found. Cruikshank had been to the
museum in Baghdad, had inspected the collection, the storerooms, the
outbuildings, and had interviewed people who had been present around the
time of the looting, including George and some US troops. And Cruikshank was
present when, for the first time, US personnel along with Iraqi museum staff
broke into the storerooms.

One, which had clearly been used as a sniper point by Ba'ath forces, had
also been looted of its best items, although they had been stacked in a far
corner. The room had been opened with a key. Another storeroom looked as
though the looters had just departed with broken artefacts all over the
floor. But this, Cruikshank learned, was the way it had been left by the
museum staff. No wonder, he told the viewers - the staff hadn't wanted
anyone inside this room. Overall, he concluded, most of the serious looting
"was an inside job".

Cruikshank also tackled George directly on events leading up to the looting.
The Americans had said that the museum was a substantial point of Iraqi
resistance, and this explained their reticence in occupying it. Not true,
said George, a few militia-men had fired from the grounds and that was all.
This, as Cruikshank heavily implied, was a lie. Not only were there firing
positions in the grounds, but at the back of the museum there was a room
that seemed to have been used as a military command post. And it was hardly
credible that senior staff at the museum would not have known that.
Cruikshank's closing thought was to wonder whether the museum's senior staff
- all Ba'ath party appointees - could safely be left in post.

Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness
of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible
and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a
fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that -
these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be
believed. 


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