Most museum artifacts found

[DRoseDARs]

Funny, I STILL don't recall blaming the Coalition forces for the looting but for not doing more to prevent it. Why do you insist on continuing to insinuate that I am?

Read my quoted response to Rah's post for more. I have to get to class now. Grrr...I hate leaving in the middle of discussions and debates.

*Sigh...*

[gsmoove23]

The first requirement of a governing or occupying authority is keeping the peace. We know full well what will happen just about anywhere when order breaks down and the rule of law is non-existant so certainly some of the blame is well placed on coalition leadership. The actions of looters could have been fully anticipated.

[SlowwHand]

Oh, NO! Coalition troops screw the pooch, and all the other animals in Iraq, too.
This IS the troops fault, isn't it?

Baghdad Zoo in Tatters After Looting
18 minutes ago

By LOUIS MEIXLER, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saedia, the blind bear, sleeps huddled in the fetal position in the corner of a small metal enclosure. An angry black dog lives in the bird cage, and the lynx was last seen roaming around a nearby highway overpass.


The Baghdad zoo is in tatters. Looters have stolen or turned loose almost all the animals, and the dozen remaining have been so short of food that lions have been snacking on military rations U.S. soldiers toss inside their cages.


It's a situation U.S. soldiers and aid groups are trying to change.


Soldiers were welding together the shattered bars of the lions' den Monday, while U.S. officials gave workers $20 to come back to work.


The San Francisco-based group Wild Aid gave most zoo employees $10 last week and plans to give each another $10 this week to help boost morale. Most employees had not been paid for two months. The United States has appointed a South African, Lawrence Anthony, to help run the zoo.


"My goal is to bring the zoo out of crisis," said Anthony, who runs a game reserve in South Africa. "We need everything. The looters took everything."


That included freeing almost all the zoo's 650 animals.


Zoo curator Abdel Salam Musa said the only animals not taken were the more formidable beasts, like the lions and the porcupine.


In the zoo now are Saedia the bear, who is 30 and blind from glaucoma; her male companion Saedi; two tigers; seven lions; three wild boars and the porcupine. Some of the lions were brought to the zoo from the palaces of Odai Hussein, a son of the deposed Iraqi leader.


The monkey cages are empty, the turtles are gone and there are rumors the peacock is up for bids at the bazaar.


"They can't keep them in their houses, so they try and sell them," Musa said. "Some animals, like the deer and gazelle, people can eat."


At the zoo, U.S. soldiers with assault rifles stood guard Monday. A sign by the entrance said: "Coalition soldiers are securing the area. If you are caught, you will be detained or shot. Please honor your free country."


After the fighting, angry and impoverished looters broke into the zoo and hunted ducks and peacocks, among other game.


"The civilians that were hungry pretty much came in here and ate everything that wouldn't eat them," said Cpl. Matthew St. Pierre of Steger, Ill.


Most zookeepers fled during the fighting, and many animals went without food for days, if not longer. Some were so skinny, St. Pierre said, "they could squeeze through the bars in the cage and get out."


After the government fell, Kuwait shipped in seven tons of frozen meat, fruit, vegetables and animal feed for the zoo. Wild Aid brought in 125 pounds of meat.


"The animals were famished," said Wild Aid's Stephan Bognar. Now, he said, "You can move them off the critically endangered category to just the critical."





When U.S. soldiers arrived, the animals were roaming freely, and they were forced to shoot a few lions. Three Iraqis were found dead, apparently mauled by a bear, Bognar said.

U.S. soldiers soon restored order and lured the animals back into confinement.

The bears wound up in small cages. Zoo workers can't afford a tranquilizer gun and are afraid to move them. But aid workers also gave the bears a shower, dousing them with a garden hose. Then they fed them a few cabbages.

Other animals, especially the lions, were fed at first by soldiers.

"We'd find dead birds and we'd just throw them in the cage," St. Pierre said.

Army rations also went in: "The ones we didn't like, we'd give them."

[Ming]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
The first requirement of a governing or occupying authority is keeping the peace. We know full well what will happen just about anywhere when order breaks down and the rule of law is non-existant so certainly some of the blame is well placed on coalition leadership. The actions of looters could have been fully anticipated.

Just because they could be anticpated, doesn't relieve them of the blame FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS.

While you might be able to sit back in your comfy chair and say that the troops should have been defending the library, there was still fighting going on in the city at the time of all these incidents. And fighting continued after the incidents... defending yourself comes LONG before defending libraries...

And as far as keeping the peace... what would you be saying if the troops had had to open fire to stop the looting... You would be saying that it was all the troops fault...

People that loot, burn, and pilage are responsible for their actions. They are the ones that get MOST of the blame.

[Sava]

I never really cared about this museum crap. Yeah, it sucks that the stuff was stolen, but it was done by mostly professional art thieves. I was confident it would eventually be found. And no, it's not the US's fault. But they could have done more to protect such a culturally important site.

[Traianvs]

Hmm, I saw pictures of the remains of the museum, and a lot of it was scattered on the floor, broken and everything... while not lost, many objects might be broken, severely damaged or in fact lost after all!

[Hueij]

Investigators found that the basement storage area, which held thousands of small items not deemed suitable for display, had been disturbed in one of the rooms. They broke through a cinder-block barrier to the room to find hundreds of cardboard boxes intact and about 90 plastic boxes, containing about 5,000 less-valuable items, missing.

Didn't read the whole thread, I really don't care who is to blame for this...

But small items not deemed suitable for display probably means that they were really important archeologically. It's not the gold mask of Tut Anch Amun that's important, it's the small stuff that doesn't get displayed for a tourist crowd...

[SpencerH]

More anti US comments by those who have never stood a post, and never will, but who know more than the troops on the ground. Twerps.

[Sava]

Originally posted by SpencerH
More anti US comments by those who have never stood a post, and never will, but who know more than the troops on the ground. Twerps.

The troops on the ground aren't informed beyond what is deemed "need to know". One of my buddies is with a marine expeditionary unit, and beyond maybe a few minutes of FOXnews or CNN, ground troops didn't get squat for info during the main assault. The best my buddy got was a 3 week old newspaper.

[SlowwHand]

Sava, you meathead.
Thousands of years old, but makes no impression ?
But you're right on "need to know".

[Straybow]

Also, we only had half the troops available during Desert Storm. You can't send a handful of troops into contested areas to secure a museum or zoo, however valuable the assets. An army works by keeping its flanks covered. Besides, when the Fedayeen Saddam gets wind that an isolated platoon is occupying a location, that becomes the focus of an attack.

[SlowwHand]

One thing before I go.

Were there ferrets at that zoo ?

[Sava]

Thousands of years old, but makes no impression ?

huh? I didn't say that.

[Traianvs]

Originally posted by Straybow
Also, we only had half the troops available during Desert Storm. You can't send a handful of troops into contested areas to secure a museum or zoo, however valuable the assets. An army works by keeping its flanks covered. Besides, when the Fedayeen Saddam gets wind that an isolated platoon is occupying a location, that becomes the focus of an attack.

Well obviously you weren't there when the discussion about the museum looting was raging here.. sigh

[Straybow]

I didn't read the earlier thread. No point, I knew the "truth" would turn out to be other than those early reports.