posted April 13, 2003 at 7:47 p.m. MDT
US forces re-hire Saddam's police after 50,000 antiquities are smashed ... but that makes sense; I doubt that "Henny Penny" Rumsfeld feels that old vases and dusty statues have much use ... I mean, it's about
U.S. Forces Provoke Civil War In Baghdad: Fisk " ... There is no electricity in Baghdad - as there is no water and no law and no order - and so "we stumbled in the darkness of the museum basement, tripping over toppled statues and stumbling into broken winged bulls. When I shone my torch over one far shelf, I drew in my breath. Every pot and jar - "3,500 BC" it said on one shelf corner - had been bashed to pieces."
"Why? How could they do this? Why, when the city was already burning, when anarchy had been let loose - and less than three months after U.S. archaeologists and Pentagon officials met to discuss the country's treasures and put the Baghdad Archaeological Museum on a military data-base," Fisk wondered.
"Did the Americans allow the mobs to destroy the priceless heritage of ancient Mesopotamia? And all this happened while U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was sneering at the press for claiming that anarchy had broken out in Baghdad."