{"article":{"id":99630,"heading":"Spoils of War: the Antiquities Trade and the Looting of Iraq","author":"Gregory Elich","created":"2004-01-07 22:19:29","modified":"2004-01-08 04:53:06","last_modified":"Thu, 08 Jan 2004 11:53:06","article":"

Spoils of War: The Antiquities Trade and the Looting of Iraq

by Gregory Elich

It has been called the worst cultural disaster to happen since the Second

World War, and one archaeologist has likened it to a \"lobotomy of an entire

culture.\" To the dismay of archaeologists throughout the world, the

toppling of the Iraqi government by U.S. troops unleashed a wave of looting

and destruction of Iraq's national patrimony. Despite pleas for action from

outraged scholars, the culturally blinkered Bush Administration remained

indifferent, belatedly acting only when media coverage mushroomed into a

public relations fiasco that threatened to upend the manufactured image of

benign liberation. Although the scale of loss from the looting of the

National Museum in Baghdad was less serious than initially indicated, it was

nevertheless a crippling blow, while elsewhere in Iraq the situation ran

alarmingly out of control.

article at:

http:\/\/globalresearch.ca\/articles\/ELI401A.html<\/a>

<\/p>\n","contact":"gelich@worldnet.att.net","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"Archaeological destruction throughout Iraq","numcomment":2,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2004\/01\/99630.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":99652,"heading":"The bush psychopathology","article":"Further along in the same article :\r\n\r\n"Just days after the first looters entered the National Museum, both the National Library and Archives and the Library of Korans were looted and then set afire. Almost the entire collection of 12 million volumes at the National Library and Archives perished in the conflagration. Despite an outcry from scholars from around the world and damning media coverage, days passed while apathetic U.S. officials failed to take any measures whatsoever to safeguard the museum. In a press conference on April 11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed concerns with a curt, "Stuff happens! But in terms of what\u2019s going on in that country, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over, and over, and over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, \u2018Oh, my goodness, you didn\u2019t have a plan.\u2019\r\n\r\nThat bush corporate master plan: Destroy the past and mortgage out the future...that way no one knows, no one remembers the great promise of humanity and everyone is doomed to feudal serfdom to pay off the interest to the plutocrats. So much for America!","author":"Parmenides","parent_id":99630,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2004-01-08 04:38:37","modified":"2013-11-11 00:28:19","fileurl":""},{"id":99655,"heading":"American vandalism of Ur","article":"And also, according to a conversation I had with Tariq Ali when he was in LA, the ancient ruins of Ur, one of the first great citys' on planet Earth, have been desecrated with American graffiti and trash. \r\n\r\nAnother great victory for bush, the worst vandal around.","author":"Parmenides","parent_id":99630,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2004-01-08 04:53:06","modified":"2004-01-08 04:53:06","fileurl":""}]}