Iraqi antiquities ripoff + pentagon looters
Thu Jul 13, 2006 22:41
Cradle of civilization
Iraq is one vast archaeological site, resting on the remains of some of the earliest human civilizations, says archaeologist Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York. Empire-ruling cities such as Ur, Nineveh and Babylon lie beneath its soil.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2005-11-02-iraq-art_x.htm
====================
During the 1991 war, Saddam implemented strict laws against looting of archaeological sites.
These artifacts are very important to Iraqs heritage and national pride.
It is known that the Pentagon was using many methods to destroy things held sacred to the Iraqis.
Remember the photos of Saddam in the "spider hole" ?
The Pentagon was repeatedly warned
that these art galleries were going to be vandalized,
yet did nothing.
At another time, in another war, the United States and its allies realized that cultural property would be endangered by an invasion and acted to minimize that damage. In the spring of 1943, when victory over Nazi Germany was far from assured, the American military created what would become known as the monuments, fine arts and archives section.
One has to wonder how much money those artifacts could fetch,
especially since many experts have said that these artifacts were hand picked, and the "looting" was done by professionals.
It is also curious that, many of the artifacts have made their way around the globe, for sale in U.s. and other markets.
The question, is how did they get there ?
did some Iraqi looter with no money take an airplane from Baghdad airport to the U.S. and sell them on the open, or black markets ?
Very doubtfull.
So, do we know how much was stolen, and who did it ?
early accounts that 170,000 items had been looted,
reported in newspapers worldwide, including USA TODAY.
The University of Chicago's Oriental Institute have said between
50,000 and 200,000 items were stolen from Baghdad museums after the city fell to US forces.
www.museum-security.org/03/056.html
a book was written by Col. Bogdanos,
who is a representative of the U.S. military,
detailing the thefts.(it sells for $25.95)
about the book...
"a look at how the thefts unfolded and the behind-the-scenes efforts
to recover the priceless antiquities."
In the book, Bogdanos, 48, tells the more personal story of the path he took to Baghdad from his family's lower Manhattan apartment after the World Trade Center fell on Sept. 11, 2001
"All changed with 9/11. The four-year journey that followed took Bogdanos into active duty, through a stint tracking down Taliban records in Afghanistan and finally to his role as leader of the team investigating the museum thefts."
more than 13,864 objects have been stolen,
Columbia University archaeologist Zainab Bahrani,
believes a final analysis will find that more than 20,000 items were stolen.
==========================
this is a long way from 170,000 items !
does this book sound a bit biased to you ?
He also says
"despite the prior warnings, planners simply did not believe that the museum ...
would be looted."
OK, right !
=============================
Rumsfeld
While Baghdad burned, Donald Rumsfeld fiddled. Questioned about the orgy of looting and pillaging taking place under the gaze of U.S. forces, Rumsfeld criticized the media for exaggerating the extent of the damage.
"The images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over," he complained. "It's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase and you see it twenty times. And you think, my goodness, were there that many vases?"
After pausing for laughter, Rumsfeld delivered the punch line: "Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?"
Rumsfeld's Response
"Stuff happens," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news briefing on April 11, when asked about widespread looting in Baghdad.
"But," he continued, "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, 'Oh, my goodness, you didn't have a plan.' That's nonsense."
Two days later, faced with overwhelming proof of mayhem in Baghdad, Rumsfeld again disavowed responsibility for the looters' rampage.
When the interviewer pointed out that Iraqi museum officials claimed that they had asked the U.S. military to protect the museum, and that the military had refused, Rumsfeld responded: "Oh, my goodness. Look, I have no idea."
Looting, he concluded "isn't something that someone allows or doesn't allow. It's something that happens."
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20030414.html
==========
More details emerge about the 'theft of the century'
Looting of Iraqi museum was long planned
"Witnesses have spoken of seeing well-dressed men with walkie-talkies at the scene, and of artifacts being transported away in orderly convoys of vans rather than over the heads of the crowd.
http://www.workers.org/ww/2003/plunder0501.php
==================
There seems to be a trend of stolen antiquities and war...
http://www.google.com/search?q=Afghanistan+antiquities+war+stolen
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iraq+antiquities+war+stolen
These artifacts are from the cradle of civilization,
This is not just Iraqi, but the world's cultural heritage.
some of the looters had keys to vaults, left their trucks parked outside, were able to lift and make off with stone statues weighing hundreds of pounds.
hOW do you move something that wieghs hunderes of pounds
intend to make money off of it ?
Many said that this was pre-planned
Brad
Two cultural advisers to U.S. President George Bush had already resigned in protest
due to the failure of U.S. forces to protect Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.
---
Some thieves had keys to vaults inside the museum. "It looks as if part of the theft was a very, very deliberate, planned action," said McGuire Gibson, president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad
---
"You'd have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find looting on this scale," said Eleanor Robson, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a council member of the British School of Archeology in Iraq, a semiofficial scholarly institution.
British scholars asked Prime Minister Tony Blair as early as last December to protect Iraq's museums and historical sites against looting and destruction. In particular, the scholars were worried by the precedent set following the gulf war in 1991, when 9 of Iraq's 13 regional museums were ransacked and their treasures were sold on the international art market.
They said they suspected that professional thieves were behind the looting of Baghdad's museum and library.
Archaeological officials in Baghdad took reporters through the museum today and pointed to what they said was clear evidence of professionalism on the part of some looters: the use of glass cutters, the bypassing of reproductions in favor of valuable originals and the carting off of major pieces weighing hundreds of pounds.
http://www.ffrd.org/terrorism-war/4.20.03.2.htm
=========
the country's National Library also had been ransacked
http://www.kcoyle.net/baghdad.html
============
Iraq is one vast archaeological site, resting on the remains of some of the earliest human civilizations, says archaeologist Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York. Empire-ruling cities such as Ur, Nineveh and Babylon lie beneath its soil.
In the public galleries, 40 prominent objects were stolen by organized thieves. Only 15 have been recovered, including the 5,000-year-old limestone Sacred Vase of Warka, among the world's oldest carved-stone ritual vessels.
In the basement, evidence "strongly suggests" an inside job. Thieves broke through a hidden back entrance whose metal door showed no signs of forced entry. Incredibly, the theft of the museum's most valuable coins and cylinder seals, whose impressions served as a signature on ancient cuneiform tablets, was botched. The thieves lost a set of keys to the container lockers in the choking darkness of the torch-lit basement.
11/2/2005
On the trail of stolen Iraqi art
More than two years after the museum, home to the remains of mankind's most ancient cities, was pillaged by an army of looters, thousands of the stolen objects have yet to be recovered.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2005-11-02-iraq-art_x.htm
The plundering of Iraq's cultural institutions demonstrates yet again how warfare fuels the global trade in looted antiquities.
In the days following the sack of Baghdad's museums, the first question asked was: Why had coalition war planners and military commanders not done more to stop it from happening? Looking to the events of April 2003, and beyond, another and more fundamental question is: Why has no concerted international action been taken to block the trade and sale of material looted from archaeological sites and cultural institutions during wartime?
The simple answer seems to be that the political will just hasn't been there.
No one can blame Iraqis for believing that their museums were modern treasure houses--in a sense, they were. A lucrative international trade in Iraqi antiquities had already emerged in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. In the next three years, ten regional museums were attacked. Something like three thousand objects were stolen, of which few have ever been recovered
snip
Large numbers of antiquities from Iraq, likely looted, have been on open sale in Europe and America for the past ten years, and nothing has been done about it. On the Monday following the attacks on the National Museum it took me only half an hour to locate forty cuneiform tablets for sale on nine Internet sites from around the world. Presumably, these are only the tip of an iceberg.
http://www.archaeology.org/0307/etc/war.html
The Burger King of Ur
Given the black market value of ancient art objects, U.S. military leaders had been warned that the looting of all thirteen national museums throughout the country would be a particularly grave danger in the days after they captured Baghdad and took control of Iraq.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=4710
Many priceless Mesopotamian artifacts are missing from the Iraq Museum following its well-publicized looting. International experts say professional thieves were behind the job. Museum records were partially destroyed during the museum rampage, leaving the world with only a scattering of digital images and information on missing artifacts.
"If losses are as bad as some reports [indicate]—perhaps 170,000 artifacts—saying we could document one-third of it is probably optimistic," said Dr. Clemens Reichel, a specialist on Mesopotamian archaeology at the Oriental Institute. At the University of Chicago, researchers may be able to document some 15,000 artifacts.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0429_030429_iraqlooting.html
he United States, castigated for having protected Iraq's oil fields but not its cultural heritage, has dispatched FBI agents to Iraq to begin an investigation as part of the recovery effort. The United States has not ratified the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. Unless the lesson of this failure is applied to greater efforts to protect cultural properties, the U.S. military faces more criticism for lacking respect for culture.
OPINION
Blame for the disaster at the National Museum of Iraq lies not with the Army but with the priorities and directives of the Bush administration. The utter crassness of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's dismissal of museum looting reflects the general cultural indifference of a White House that values oil commodities above historic artifacts. Our State and Defense Departments had been warned of the danger, yet the administration chose to protect the Oil Ministry but not the art museum. The result is a staggering loss to world history.
EDWARD HILL Houston, April 18, 2003 The writer is a professor of art,
University of Houston.
Experts' Pleas to Pentagon Didn't Save Museum
But in an e-mail message, Mr. Collins said that "in no case" had his office instructed military commanders to provide protection for the museum or library.
"We leave such decisions to commanders on the scene," he said.
http://www.ffrd.org/terrorism-war/4.20.03.2.htm
The theft of art during war has always taken place, says Lisa Jardine. But the recent plundering of historic remains in Iraq and Afghanistan threatens the permanent loss of the record of ancient civilisations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5111196.stm
![http://www.archive.org/download/George_Says..._the_Baghdad_Museum_Baybeelon_.../georgesays022505.jpg]()
links...
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20030414.html
The Iraq War & Archaeology
http://iwa.univie.ac.at/
LOST TREASURES FROM IRAQ
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html
http://the.iraq.museum/
Oriental Institute Iraq Workshop
Statement read at the Workshop “The Threat to Iraq’s Cultural Heritage – Current Status and Future Prospects" (July 23, 2005)
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/ws_statement.html
http://www.h-net.org/~museum/iraq.html
http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/Military/War_in_Iraq/Looting/Art_and_Antiquities/
http://www.kcoyle.net/baghdad.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Experts%27+Pleas+to+Pentagon+Didn%27t+Save+Museum%2C%22
http://www.museum-security.org/03/056.html#2
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-05-16-iraq-antiquities_x.htm
Iraq is one vast archaeological site, resting on the remains of some of the earliest human civilizations, says archaeologist Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York. Empire-ruling cities such as Ur, Nineveh and Babylon lie beneath its soil.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2005-11-02-iraq-art_x.htm
====================
During the 1991 war, Saddam implemented strict laws against looting of archaeological sites.
These artifacts are very important to Iraqs heritage and national pride.
It is known that the Pentagon was using many methods to destroy things held sacred to the Iraqis.
Remember the photos of Saddam in the "spider hole" ?
The Pentagon was repeatedly warned
that these art galleries were going to be vandalized,
yet did nothing.
At another time, in another war, the United States and its allies realized that cultural property would be endangered by an invasion and acted to minimize that damage. In the spring of 1943, when victory over Nazi Germany was far from assured, the American military created what would become known as the monuments, fine arts and archives section.
One has to wonder how much money those artifacts could fetch,
especially since many experts have said that these artifacts were hand picked, and the "looting" was done by professionals.
It is also curious that, many of the artifacts have made their way around the globe, for sale in U.s. and other markets.
The question, is how did they get there ?
did some Iraqi looter with no money take an airplane from Baghdad airport to the U.S. and sell them on the open, or black markets ?
Very doubtfull.
So, do we know how much was stolen, and who did it ?
early accounts that 170,000 items had been looted,
reported in newspapers worldwide, including USA TODAY.
The University of Chicago's Oriental Institute have said between
50,000 and 200,000 items were stolen from Baghdad museums after the city fell to US forces.
www.museum-security.org/03/056.html
a book was written by Col. Bogdanos,
who is a representative of the U.S. military,
detailing the thefts.(it sells for $25.95)
about the book...
"a look at how the thefts unfolded and the behind-the-scenes efforts
to recover the priceless antiquities."
In the book, Bogdanos, 48, tells the more personal story of the path he took to Baghdad from his family's lower Manhattan apartment after the World Trade Center fell on Sept. 11, 2001
"All changed with 9/11. The four-year journey that followed took Bogdanos into active duty, through a stint tracking down Taliban records in Afghanistan and finally to his role as leader of the team investigating the museum thefts."
more than 13,864 objects have been stolen,
Columbia University archaeologist Zainab Bahrani,
believes a final analysis will find that more than 20,000 items were stolen.
==========================
this is a long way from 170,000 items !
does this book sound a bit biased to you ?
He also says
"despite the prior warnings, planners simply did not believe that the museum ...
would be looted."
OK, right !
=============================
Rumsfeld
While Baghdad burned, Donald Rumsfeld fiddled. Questioned about the orgy of looting and pillaging taking place under the gaze of U.S. forces, Rumsfeld criticized the media for exaggerating the extent of the damage.
"The images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over," he complained. "It's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase and you see it twenty times. And you think, my goodness, were there that many vases?"
After pausing for laughter, Rumsfeld delivered the punch line: "Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?"
Rumsfeld's Response
"Stuff happens," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news briefing on April 11, when asked about widespread looting in Baghdad.
"But," he continued, "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, 'Oh, my goodness, you didn't have a plan.' That's nonsense."
Two days later, faced with overwhelming proof of mayhem in Baghdad, Rumsfeld again disavowed responsibility for the looters' rampage.
When the interviewer pointed out that Iraqi museum officials claimed that they had asked the U.S. military to protect the museum, and that the military had refused, Rumsfeld responded: "Oh, my goodness. Look, I have no idea."
Looting, he concluded "isn't something that someone allows or doesn't allow. It's something that happens."
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20030414.html
==========
More details emerge about the 'theft of the century'
Looting of Iraqi museum was long planned
"Witnesses have spoken of seeing well-dressed men with walkie-talkies at the scene, and of artifacts being transported away in orderly convoys of vans rather than over the heads of the crowd.
http://www.workers.org/ww/2003/plunder0501.php
==================
There seems to be a trend of stolen antiquities and war...
http://www.google.com/search?q=Afghanistan+antiquities+war+stolen
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iraq+antiquities+war+stolen
These artifacts are from the cradle of civilization,
This is not just Iraqi, but the world's cultural heritage.
some of the looters had keys to vaults, left their trucks parked outside, were able to lift and make off with stone statues weighing hundreds of pounds.
hOW do you move something that wieghs hunderes of pounds
intend to make money off of it ?
Many said that this was pre-planned
Brad
Two cultural advisers to U.S. President George Bush had already resigned in protest
due to the failure of U.S. forces to protect Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.
---
Some thieves had keys to vaults inside the museum. "It looks as if part of the theft was a very, very deliberate, planned action," said McGuire Gibson, president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad
---
"You'd have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find looting on this scale," said Eleanor Robson, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a council member of the British School of Archeology in Iraq, a semiofficial scholarly institution.
British scholars asked Prime Minister Tony Blair as early as last December to protect Iraq's museums and historical sites against looting and destruction. In particular, the scholars were worried by the precedent set following the gulf war in 1991, when 9 of Iraq's 13 regional museums were ransacked and their treasures were sold on the international art market.
They said they suspected that professional thieves were behind the looting of Baghdad's museum and library.
Archaeological officials in Baghdad took reporters through the museum today and pointed to what they said was clear evidence of professionalism on the part of some looters: the use of glass cutters, the bypassing of reproductions in favor of valuable originals and the carting off of major pieces weighing hundreds of pounds.
http://www.ffrd.org/terrorism-war/4.20.03.2.htm
=========
the country's National Library also had been ransacked
http://www.kcoyle.net/baghdad.html
============
Iraq is one vast archaeological site, resting on the remains of some of the earliest human civilizations, says archaeologist Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York. Empire-ruling cities such as Ur, Nineveh and Babylon lie beneath its soil.
In the public galleries, 40 prominent objects were stolen by organized thieves. Only 15 have been recovered, including the 5,000-year-old limestone Sacred Vase of Warka, among the world's oldest carved-stone ritual vessels.
In the basement, evidence "strongly suggests" an inside job. Thieves broke through a hidden back entrance whose metal door showed no signs of forced entry. Incredibly, the theft of the museum's most valuable coins and cylinder seals, whose impressions served as a signature on ancient cuneiform tablets, was botched. The thieves lost a set of keys to the container lockers in the choking darkness of the torch-lit basement.
11/2/2005
On the trail of stolen Iraqi art
More than two years after the museum, home to the remains of mankind's most ancient cities, was pillaged by an army of looters, thousands of the stolen objects have yet to be recovered.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2005-11-02-iraq-art_x.htm
The plundering of Iraq's cultural institutions demonstrates yet again how warfare fuels the global trade in looted antiquities.
In the days following the sack of Baghdad's museums, the first question asked was: Why had coalition war planners and military commanders not done more to stop it from happening? Looking to the events of April 2003, and beyond, another and more fundamental question is: Why has no concerted international action been taken to block the trade and sale of material looted from archaeological sites and cultural institutions during wartime?
The simple answer seems to be that the political will just hasn't been there.
No one can blame Iraqis for believing that their museums were modern treasure houses--in a sense, they were. A lucrative international trade in Iraqi antiquities had already emerged in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. In the next three years, ten regional museums were attacked. Something like three thousand objects were stolen, of which few have ever been recovered
snip
Large numbers of antiquities from Iraq, likely looted, have been on open sale in Europe and America for the past ten years, and nothing has been done about it. On the Monday following the attacks on the National Museum it took me only half an hour to locate forty cuneiform tablets for sale on nine Internet sites from around the world. Presumably, these are only the tip of an iceberg.
http://www.archaeology.org/0307/etc/war.html
The Burger King of Ur
Given the black market value of ancient art objects, U.S. military leaders had been warned that the looting of all thirteen national museums throughout the country would be a particularly grave danger in the days after they captured Baghdad and took control of Iraq.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=4710
Many priceless Mesopotamian artifacts are missing from the Iraq Museum following its well-publicized looting. International experts say professional thieves were behind the job. Museum records were partially destroyed during the museum rampage, leaving the world with only a scattering of digital images and information on missing artifacts.
"If losses are as bad as some reports [indicate]—perhaps 170,000 artifacts—saying we could document one-third of it is probably optimistic," said Dr. Clemens Reichel, a specialist on Mesopotamian archaeology at the Oriental Institute. At the University of Chicago, researchers may be able to document some 15,000 artifacts.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0429_030429_iraqlooting.html
he United States, castigated for having protected Iraq's oil fields but not its cultural heritage, has dispatched FBI agents to Iraq to begin an investigation as part of the recovery effort. The United States has not ratified the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. Unless the lesson of this failure is applied to greater efforts to protect cultural properties, the U.S. military faces more criticism for lacking respect for culture.
OPINION
Blame for the disaster at the National Museum of Iraq lies not with the Army but with the priorities and directives of the Bush administration. The utter crassness of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's dismissal of museum looting reflects the general cultural indifference of a White House that values oil commodities above historic artifacts. Our State and Defense Departments had been warned of the danger, yet the administration chose to protect the Oil Ministry but not the art museum. The result is a staggering loss to world history.
EDWARD HILL Houston, April 18, 2003 The writer is a professor of art,
University of Houston.
Experts' Pleas to Pentagon Didn't Save Museum
But in an e-mail message, Mr. Collins said that "in no case" had his office instructed military commanders to provide protection for the museum or library.
"We leave such decisions to commanders on the scene," he said.
http://www.ffrd.org/terrorism-war/4.20.03.2.htm
The theft of art during war has always taken place, says Lisa Jardine. But the recent plundering of historic remains in Iraq and Afghanistan threatens the permanent loss of the record of ancient civilisations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5111196.stm
links...
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20030414.html
The Iraq War & Archaeology
http://iwa.univie.ac.at/
LOST TREASURES FROM IRAQ
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html
http://the.iraq.museum/
Oriental Institute Iraq Workshop
Statement read at the Workshop “The Threat to Iraq’s Cultural Heritage – Current Status and Future Prospects" (July 23, 2005)
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/ws_statement.html
http://www.h-net.org/~museum/iraq.html
http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/Military/War_in_Iraq/Looting/Art_and_Antiquities/
http://www.kcoyle.net/baghdad.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Experts%27+Pleas+to+Pentagon+Didn%27t+Save+Museum%2C%22
http://www.museum-security.org/03/056.html#2
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-05-16-iraq-antiquities_x.htm
- THE Astonishing Story the News Media Are Afraid to Break — Thu Jul 13 16:28
- Iraqi antiquities ripoff + pentagon looters — Thu Jul 13 22:41
- WHY ARE AMERICANS SO ANGRY? - PART II — Thu Jul 13 16:46
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