Teresa Nielsen Hayden has this to say:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002708.html#002708
Baghdad Museum: Corrected corrections re-corrected
Damn, damn, damn. I would so much rather have been wrong. According
to The Washington Post
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17897-2003Jun20.html>,
the count of artifacts stolen from the National Museum of Antiquities
now stands at 6,000, and is expected to rise. That's not counting
artifacts stolen from other museums and known archaeological sites.
It's a depressingly plausible-sounding story. The recent report that
only 33 priceless artifacts and some 3000 lesser artifacts were stolen
is looking culpably inoperative. The freeperati's rush to publicize
it, and demand apologies from those who criticized Rumsfeld et al., is
looking worse.
Shall we sit back and see who prints corrections? Will we need more
than one hand? One suspects the entire point of the earlier report was
to get as much publicity as possible for the magic number "33"; and
then, once they'd got it stuck in people's minds, drop the story
entirely. Many of the people who've heard that "33" won't hear any
subsequent versions unless the disinformationist conduits carry the
story; or if they do hear them, they'll assume that more accurate
later estimates are those supposedly overinflated figures that were
demolished by the magic "33".
19 responses total.
unfortuantely, whether it was 1 or 33, they're gone and nothing can be done to recover them.
Well, it looks like it was neither 1 nor 33, but around 6000. But at this point, one shouldn't believe any numbers unless there's a list of stuff to back them up, certified by an unbiased person who ought to know.
certainly things can be done to recover them. Things are being done to recover them. how successful the work will be is yet to be determined.
Boy. First the number was 172,000 and now it is 6000. Personally, I wish it was zero but heh, there is a war going on so one has to accept a certian amount of damage during a war. (Library of Alexandria comes to mind but betcha nobody knows that one.) (Uh, I make that 97% wrong the first time so there is nothing to suggest that much of an increase in accuracy the second go round on the numbers.) It also wouldn't suprise me if a lot of the missing stuff has been actually missing for more than a couple months - more than many years.
There didn't HAVE to be a war, and if there had not been this massive destruction and loss would not have occurred.
well, since Saddam was looting the culture, who can say?
Yes, but Saddam had terrible taste. Only mod 1960's stuff was in any danger of being looted from museums, and one could argue he's doing the world and future art collectors a favor.
Unfortunately thats not true, mdw. Sadaam's henchmen were already selling significant pieces on the gray market (gray, only because it was "legal" in the sense that the buyer got official documentation). I'd not be a bit surprised if a lot of the looted stuff was actually gone long before the fall of baghdad which provided a convenient cover. It is interesting how the looters manages also to burn records that would have helped document a lot of this. To thier credit a number of the henchment apparently kept copies of documentation which I hear is being offered in return for 'considerations'.
Re #8: But you would consider what he was doing good, right, because it moved the objects from those public collections you hate so much into private hands?
I think we all knew Saddam was also into money. Of course, that's always been in style, even during the 60's. If Saddam was sending henchmen to "'steal' significant pieces", then that's starting to seem less like evidence of his personal artistic sense, and more like a plot for a 1960's batman episode. Suddenly, WMD doesn't sound so fantastic - it's just another bad plot device.
I have book on the Boing 747SP. In it are photos of the Iraqi Airlines 747SP that was basically Saddam's plaything. It's quite the pricy aircraft and nothing says I've got a whole boatload of money and then some, like flying to meetings in your own 747.....
What does the "SP" suffix indicate?
Super-posh!
Apparently, "SP" means it's the shortest 747 model. There's also the
-100 and -200. The whole airliner market is depressed so you can buy a
747SP for "only" 5.9million USD. The 747SP has its very own fan club,
http://www.747sp.com/
Airbus is apparently moving forward with plans for their A380. It's going to have two full passenger decks and seat 555 people in a three-class layout. There's also going to be a freight version, the A380F, that can carry 330,000 pounds on three decks. Everyone expected this design to flop because American airlines are moving towards smaller planes, but apparently Asian airlines are very interested.
This response has been erased.
16:25 Iraqi National Museum reopens briefly to display Treasure of
Nimrud, feared stolen during first days after fall of Saddam
re#9: no. its wrong because the citizens of Iraq are denied the benefit of their property. Responding to the meta discussion, what I object to is the rotting of stuff that is held in so called museums that are never seen by any visitors that would otherwise fund the preservation of what limited artifacts a museum can preserve where it legitimately sold on an open market. I recall a comment of a noted expert upon visiting the Iraqi museum after the "looting" who initially noted how horrible it was on viewing a room but then was further horrified to find out that that particular room hadn't in fact been "looted" and what he saw was simply the normal storage method -piles of junk.
This response has been erased.
You have several choices: