A Baghdad museum which was looted during the fall of Saddam, has just partially reopened. The New York Times notes that only eight of the 26 galleries are available to visitors, while offering this nugget:
Yet the museum is only one institution in a place where little — not electricity or even sewerage — functions as it should, nearly six years after the beginning of the war that toppled Saddam Hussein. The museum, like life here, may be more secure than at any other time since then, but it is not normal.
Was life under Hussein's fascist regime "normal"? That's the Times' implication. The museum was normal in 2003, isn't now, and nor is life in Baghdad.
I'm sorry the museum isn't functioning as it should. I must confess, though, that the fact that Saddam's rape rooms are no longer operating, nor his dictatorship, is of more importance. I guess that makes me a 'glass is half-full' type of guy.
The Times can be opposed to the Iraq invasion, but please don't write pieces about a looted museum to argue life was normal under Saddam.
Contrary to months of news reports that 50 to 100 percent of the Iraq National Museum's artifacts were looted when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad, the truth is that no more than 5 percent of those treasures ever left the museum buildings.
2 percent was kept in vaults elsewhere.
2 percent was stolen, probably by museum workers, before U.S. troops arrived.
1 percent was looted as the Americans liberated Iraq from Saddam's fascism.
Posted by: Frank Warner | February 23, 2009 at 08:15 PM
Yeah. "Liberated" Iraq. More like "liberated" billions of dollars from the American treasury, which sure could have come in handy now.
Posted by: GIJoe | February 24, 2009 at 09:34 AM