More perspectives on the looting in Iraq

The looting of Iraqi cultural assets was an outrage and a tragedy, but it seems that the charge that military planners simply didn't care about artifacts isn't true. For as is becoming increasingly clear, even sites of vital importance for military intelligence were also left to be plundered, as the Washington Post reports:

Because ad hoc discoveries might occur anywhere, the U.S. military is racing belatedly to lock down files and equipment at scores of potentially sensitive facilities in Baghdad that went unguarded in the chaotic days immediately after the fall of Hussein. Beginning late last week, U.S. combat forces in the Iraqi capital moved to take custody of all 23 government ministries and more than two dozen other locations they said might yield valuable intelligence.

Senior U.S. officials with responsibility over postwar Iraq were highly critical of the delay in securing those facilities. One official interviewed in Kuwait described it as "the barn-door phenomenon." He said retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, the occupation governor of Iraq, sought special protection for 10 Iraqi ministries, identifying them as potential repositories of weapons data, but that only the Oil Ministry remained intact after U.S. ground forces took possession of Baghdad. Combat commanders, the official said, gave "insufficient priority to getting into these places," and "there wasn't enough force to accomplish that initial sequestering of buildings and records."

Meanwhile, the Washington Times reveals:

In a memo sent two weeks before the fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon office charged with rebuilding Iraq urged top commanders of U.S. ground forces to protect the Iraqi National Museum and other cultural sites from looters. "Coalition forces must secure these facilities in order to prevent looting and the resulting irreparable loss of cultural treasures," says the March 26 memo. . .

The museum was No. 2 on a list of 16 sites that ORHA deemed crucial to protect. Financial institutions topped the list, including the Iraqi Central Bank, which is now a burned-out shell filled with twisted metal beams from the collapse of the roof and all nine floors under it.

"We asked for just a few soldiers at each building, or if they feared snipers, then just one or two tanks," said an angry ORHA official, one of several who spoke to The [Washington] Times on the condition of anonymity.

As noted before here, however, defending the banks has been much rougher work than anyone anticipated, while this article from the Chicago Tribune further clarifies what an aggressive defense of the Baghdad Museum would have entailed:

Two days before Iraq's National Museum was looted of priceless objects, leading curators said they fled the museum complex when Fedayeen Saddam guerrillas entered the courtyard and fought U.S. Army tanks.

"When we saw these people in our garden firing at tanks, we said, `Oh, we'll be hit,'" said Donny George, a museum official. George and several others headed for safety, returning five days later to discover the museum trashed by looters and several of the collection's most valuable pieces missing. . .

Museum officials say the looting could have been stopped if U.S. forces had maintained a presence at the site. U.S. troops counter that they were engaged in a major battle in the heart of the city.

The museum is across the street from a Special Republican Guard compound and transmission center, both of which were heavily bombed during the war. The compound contained three armored vehicles and a recoilless rifle mounted on the back of a truck. . .

Lt. Col. Eric Schwartz, commander of Task Force 164 of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said during street battles in the later days of the war his men were 500 yards from the museum at a key intersection. "They went to that intersection and took some pretty intense enemy fire that came from the museum," he said. "RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], AK-47s. My soldiers got pelted pretty good. We fired one tank round into the museum."

The tank round left a hole in a front arch of the museum. Bloodstains were seen on the walls, according to Army and museum officials. Some weapons, including an unexploded grenade, and uniforms were found on the museum site, according to U.S. forces. "There's a common misconception that American forces arrived and stood around as looting took place," said 2nd Lt. Erik Balascik, who was helping guard the museum Saturday and who participated in the battle around the museum grounds. "We didn't observe any looting at all," Balascik said. "There are back doors. They came in through the back and out the back. We never observed the actual looting of the museum. However, the whole city was being looted at the time."

Balascik said it would have taken a larger force than his Task Force 164 Charlie Company to secure the museum during the battle. "And it would have opened the flank of our task force," he said. "Our security would have been gone."

By the way, while Mickey Kaus has quite a bit on this whole controversy, his comment on Sunday that "our forces didn't even know for several days that there was a museum there to protect" is a less than accurate paraphrase of the following sentence, which appears in the Tribune article cited above: "Moreover, some troops said they didn't know for several days that they were in a battle around a museum filled with priceless antiquities".

Posted by David on April 22, 2003 10:00 PM