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Recent
Stories
April
23, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers
William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
Binoy
Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq
David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?
Standard
Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Andrew
Rodman
Lawn Poem
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23
Website
of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
April
22, 2003
Edward
Said
The Appalling Consequences of the Iraq
War are Now Clear
Sam
Hamod
What's the Deal with This War?
Kurt
Nimmo
Shi'a Will to Power
Gary
Leupp
At last! The Necessary Evidence
Carl
Estabrook
Oblivious Americans: They Distort,
We Subside
John
Stanton
Iran's Reza Pahlavi: a Puppet of the US and Israel?
Ramzy
Baroud
What Else Hasn't Israel Told America?
Steven
Sherman
About That Cuba Letter
Wayne Madsen
Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult
Stew
Albert
Creep
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/22
Website
of the Day
Critical Media Literacy in Times of War
April
21, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
An Administration in Contempt
Gary
Leupp
Easter Thoughts on Liberation, Jesus
and Kanaka WaiWai
Roger
Witherspoon
Why Michigan Needs Affirmative Action
Uri Avnery
At Midnight, a Knock on the Door
Col. Dan
Smith
Early Lessons from Iraq
Jo
Freeman
After the Protest Comes Politics
Michael
Berry
The Friedman Absurdities
Gray
Brechin
Hang Black Banners: Mourning the Cultural Loss
Bob Riedel
The Taliban from Texas
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/21
April
19, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Rape of History
Saul
Landau
Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush's
War, Wait for Armageddon
Michael
J. Fellows
Off With Their Heads: the Constitution According to Scalia
Pablo
Mukherjee
Roadmap to Resistance
Omar
Barghouti
Sharon's Bloody Beat
Anthony
Gancarski
Tony Blair: the Most Powerful Man in the World
Mickey
Z.
Animals: the Other Collateral Damage
Will
Potter
When Police Attack Journalists
William
MacDougall
America's In-Bedded Journalism
Neve
Gordon
Haunted by History
Adam
Engel
Wal-Mart and Peace
Dr.
Susan Block
Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Buono, Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/19
Song of
the Weekend
Baghdad to Basra
April
18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom":
This One's Not About Oil
Jorge
Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become
Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation
Mickey
Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes
Hussein
Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV
Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles
Matania
Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President
of Israel's Supreme Court
Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us
Joe
Allen
My Lai Revisited
Carl Estabrook
Support Our Euphemism
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/18
Website
of the Day
Meet the Victims of War
April
17, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in
the Patriot Missile System
Joanne
Mariner
Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications
for the Pentagon
Issam
Nashashibi
Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman
to Baghdad
Wayne Madsen
Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism
Robert
Fisk
The Army of Occupation
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Virtual Saddam Takes Aim
Biljana
Vankovska
A Personal View of Iraq: Where
is the Truth?
Dan Brook
Oil War: Fueling the Empire
Stanley
Heller
Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like
Tim Robbins
A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation
Harold
A. Gould
Iraq After the War
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/17
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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April 25,
2003
Turning Broken Statues
into Bombs
It's Not the
Oil, It's the Art!
by DAVID VEST
"What the hell! As long as U.S.
laws aren't broken, it's all right. After all, these things are
not appreciated in those countries. They're brought here and
given a home. Now cultured people can see them."
-- Lowell Collins, Houston antiquities
dealer, on the plundering of Pre-Colombian sculptures from Mayan
sites, quoted in The Art Stealers, Milton Esterow, Macmillan,
1972.
Here's a suggestion: arrest whoever gave the order
to leave Iraq's national museum unguarded, together with anyone
who knew about it and failed to override it, and take them to
those outdoor holding cells built for terrorists in Guantanamo
Bay. We can make room by releasing all the children we've finally
admitted we've been holding among the prisoners ("the radio
said they were just detainees"). If we're feeling patriotic,
we might want to rip the uniform of the United States of America
off their backs and let them ride naked. Sound a little extreme?
Read on.
The sacking of Iraq's national museum
was "completely predictable," says Jane Walbaum, the
president of the Archaeological Institute of America. As far
back as February, the AIA had been warning anyone who would listen
that "following the 1991 Gulf War, archaeological sites
and museums in Iraq were looted on a large scale, with stolen
antiquities appearing on the art markets in Western Europe and
the United States." That the same looting was not just likely
but certain to happen again, this time on a gigantic scale, unless
the U.S. took serious preventive measures, was a no-brainer.
Weeks before thieves and vandals were
left free to haul away irreplaceable artefacts, destroying much
of what they didn't take, the museum had also been identified
as "a prime target for looters" in a memo from retired
Lt. General Jay Garner's office. Garner's people felt the museum
should rate second behind the banks in order of security priority.
Garner, the new "governor" of Iraq, was reportedly
livid when he learned he had been victimized by a bureaucratic
dodge older than Ancient Mesopotamia: one cannot be held accountable
for failing to act on a memo one has not yet "gotten around"
to reading.
"Inexcusable," said Martin
Sullivan, the chair of the White House Advisory Committee on
Cultural Property, when U.S. forces ignored the memo, stood idly
by and declined to intervene as the museum was sacked. Sullivan
and two other members of his committee resigned in protest. Bear
in mind, these were not left-wing members of what Foxadelphia
likes to call the "anti-Bush, anti-America" crowd.
These were people who reported to the president.
Sullivan and his colleagues did the right
thing, but should they have been shocked? The scandalous looting
of Mesopotamia's cultural heritage, consistently described on
cable TV as something unprecedented, was in fact a re-run of
looting that went largely unreported after Gulf War One.
Immediately following the 1991 war against
Iraq, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem began getting requests to
evaluate "pieces." The requests came from Americans.
The "pieces" came from Iraq and were worth hundreds
of thousands of dollars. Because the objects presented for "evaluation"
represented only a minute part of what had been stolen in the
first Gulf war, the scene was merely a microcosm of what was
happening around the world at other cultural institutions (and
for the benefit of private collectors) as thieves shopped their
bling-bling from the cradle of civilization.
John Malcolm Russell, writing in Archaeology
in 1996, called this tragedy "The Modern Sack of Nineveh"
and sounded a warning: "Today Assyria is in fashion again,
and its sculptures are bringing unprecedented prices." He
cited a Nineveh porch sculpture sold at auction for $12 million,
"by far the highest price ever paid for an antiquity."
What sounded like a warning to some ears
may have rung like a dinner bell in others. As a result, many
of the newly privatized artefacts are already passing through
the global underground art market directly into the hands of
collectors and dealers who know how to "appreciate"
them, in exchange for cash and who knows what else.
That is why the working assumption must
not be that "mistakes were made" as commanders faced
"tough calls" in the chaos.
Rather we should act on the basis that
crimes against all humanity have been committed and demand a
public accounting from the people who were in charge when it
happened, to determine how much they knew about what they were
doing.
What a choice: either our field commanders
are so ignorant and lacking in judgment they make George W. Bush
look like Marcus Aurelius, or they are implicated in some very
sinister business indeed.
If they didn't know what they were doing,
their ignorance was as inexcusable as it was disgraceful. They
have done more damage to this country's standing abroad than
they could ever be expected to imagine. They may have helped
to finance decades of terrorism. If they did know what was going
on, they're key players in the biggest corruption scandal in
U.S. military history.
The only other possible explanation is
that they were acting on orders from much higher up the chain.
In any case, they should have already
been put where cultured people can see them and interrogated.
This is no time for Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. His scorching
new CD, Way
Down Here, is now available from CounterPunch.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
Today's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers
William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
Binoy
Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq
David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?
Standard
Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Andrew
Rodman
Lawn Poem
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23
Website
of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
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