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Recent
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May
16, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
May
15, 2003
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Junaid Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
Fooling
Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
May
10 / 11, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Rosenthal Faces the Music in Key
Med Marijuana Case
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Labor in the Dawn of Empire
Annie
C. Higgins
The Last Time I Saw Mus'ab
Ron Jacobs
The Devil in New England
William
Mandel
One on One with Sen. Joe McCarthy
Jason Leopold
Halliburton Still Flouts the Law as It Profits from Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Iraqi Quagmire
Larry Magnuson
William Bennett: Next Viceroy
of Iraq?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The Good Terrorists?
Anthony
Gancarski
Chalabi: Drowning in Ba'ath-water?
Steven
Sherman
A Letter to My European Friends
Khaled
El-Bizri
Mr. Bush Comes to Santa Clara
Bruce
Jackson
How Fear Curdles the Soul
Adam Engel
Flag in the Rain
Poets
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/10
Website
of the Weekend
Killing Again
May
9, 2003
Rahul
Mahajan
Don't Lift the Sanctions Yet
Wayne
Madsen
When Lying Pays Off: Neo-Con Fabricators
Chris
Floyd
The Karamazov Question
Don Monkerud
The Great Christian Schism: War or Peace?
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Drunk on Power: Bush, Power and the
Pathology of the Dry Drunk
Hammond
Guthrie
Bombastic Promise Keeping
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/09
May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
with Gretta Duisenberg
Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
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Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
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Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
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Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kienthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
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Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
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South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
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Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
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April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
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Uri
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Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
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Brush with the Law
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Z.
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Robert
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Did the US Murder Journalists?
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Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
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Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
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May
17, 2003
Plundering the Museums of Baghdad
The Americans
Said: "Go In, Ali Baba! It's All Yours!"
By WALTER SOMMERFELD
Translated by George Paxinos
Since the fall of Baghdad, anarchy has reigned
in this city of five million. Everyone is armed to the teeth,
and shooting can be heard around the clock, especially at night.
Shots are fired in warning, in fear, or in celebration, when
a district is suddenly supplied with power for two hours a day.
The greatest worry is therefore security. All former government
employees, hundreds of thousands of teachers, doctors, professors
and civil servants, have not been paid for almost two months.
Theft, robbery and murder are daily fare. Armed robbers commit
carjacking in broad daylight. On the other hand, neighborly help
is experiencing an upsurge. Many districts have formed citizens'
protection groups, and everyday folk control traffic with home-made
signs. The Iraqis are artists at improvisation.
Particularly shocking for most Iraqis
was the fervor with which their infrastructure and cultural heritage
has been destroyed. Many independent eyewitnesses are unanimous
about this. Apparently the infrastructure of this ancient state
was systematically plundered, district by district. Whatever
was not worth the taking, was destroyed. In museums, libraries
and cultural centers, in the country's 15 universities, in every
ministry with the exception of the Ministry of Oil, in hospitals,
state warehouses, hotels, banks, palaces of government ministers,
and also in the German Embassy, the French Cultural Institute
and the UN-Building. Even at the beginning of May, plundering
continued throughout the day.
>>A resident reports how US soldiers
commanded chance Iraqi bystanders on the museum grounds, to go
into the museum and help themselves: "This is your treasure,
get in!3<<
These lootings were instigated or tolerated.
Many Iraqis report on futile attempts to get soldiers to intervene.
Even appeals to the command center in the Palestine Hotel remained
fruitless. Looters were both simple people from the poor quarters
and wealthy residents of the neighborhood. People stole for reasons
of poverty, anger, revenge or greed, and their spoils were often
sold off the same day on the streets.
The most surprising detail in all reports
was the assertion that American soldiers often made the looting
possible at all, by breaking open or unlocking well-protected
doors and then animating bystanders to plunder: "Go in,
Ali Baba, its yours!3 -- shouted the Americans, say Iraqi eyewitnesses.
Among Americans., "Ali Baba" has become an almost generic
term for Iraqi looters. A member of the UN Development Agency
observed how Americans forced open the Technical University,
opened computers and removed their hard drives, before allowing
looters in.
Many Iraqis speak openly about these
incidents, but wish to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisals
and because they must now work with Americans. This also applies
to the staff and residents of the Iraqi Museum, more especially
as their observervations were so explosively shocking. On Tuesday,
the 8th of April, fierce fighting occurred around the museum,
as it lies in the center of town and is surrounded by strategically
important points. The armed civil guard designated to protect
the museum had to retreat in fear from the premises, which then
fell into the hands of the Americans.
>>Only after one of the Directors
managed to reach a colleague at the British Museum via a borrowed
satellite phone, who mobilized British and American authorities
in London, did tanks roll up, which have been there since.<<
A high-ranking museum official reports
that the day after, two tanks rolled up, and American soldiers
broke open the doors of the main building and spent around two
hours unobserved in the display galleries. Afterward, they removed
certain objects and transported them away. Which objects these
were, could not be identified by him or other observers. What
is certain is only that most of the large and conspicuous exhibits
were still present, due to their difficulty of transportation,
and that only the smaller exhibits had been removed from their
display cases to storerooms.
A resident reports how US soldiers commanded
chance Iraqi bystanders on the museum grounds, to go into the
museum and help themselves: "This is your treasure, get
in!3 For three days the plunderers worked unhindered and carried
away their booty in front of running cameras. The few museum
employees who had returned to work tried desperately to get American
troops to protect the museum. A few soldiers turned up for a
short while, looked at what was going on and disappeared again
with the remark: "This is not our order."
Afterward, employees worried that as
everywhere else, fires would be laid, destroying the irreplaceable
documentation, the excavation reports and the library. Two directors
of the Department of Antiquities therefore went on the Sunday
to the US Command Center at the Palestine Hotel. and had to wait
for four hours for an audience, before they were able to plead
urgently for protection. The commander promised to immediately
send tanks and troops -- but two days later, nothing had happened
yet. Only after one of the Directors managed to reach a colleague
at the British Museum via a borrowed satellite phone, who mobilized
British and American authorities in London, did tanks roll up,
which have been there since.
Today, the Iraqi Museum is the best-protected
museum on Earth. Its workers and even its directors, who are
now cleaning up without pay and cataloguing the damage, are allowed
in only after personal and baggage security checks -- and are
very indignant: "We decide, who enters and when" said
a soldier on guard at the entrance. Recovered objects are stored
in a side building. As the Director General showed me around,
the tables held hardly more than 100 pieces, protected by perhaps
a dozen soldiers, who had erected their field bunks next to them.
With certainty, some of the most well-known
exhibits of the museum, which had still been in the display galleries,
have disappeared (see list). The looters broke open the storeroom
undisturbed, whose contents ran to over 170'000 inventoried items.
Only since a few days ago, has a generator been able to restore
lighting, and the staff been able to take stock of the damage.
The library remained intact, also the excavation records and
apparently too most of the inventory lists. There has not been
a total loss, but it seems that the greater part of the collection
has been looted.
Stolen antiquities were particularly
sought-after by journalists, so that armed gangs specialized
in robbing them along the 500-kilometre long highway from Baghdad
to the Jordanian border. One of those robbed reported that after
he was robbed of his car, the first thing the bandits wanted
to know was: "Where are the antiquities?" In one journalist's
car, twelve boxes of antiquities were turned up.
The most precious and non-insurable artifacts,
among them the famous gold-finds from the Assyrian Queens' Graves
in Nimrod, were stored in the safe of the Central Bank. Here
too, looters had long had a free hand, but meanwhile it has also
been protected by soldiers. Even the Directorship of Antiquities
does not have any information about what remains of these treasures,
or where they may be now.
On the other hand, even after the international
outcry over cultural pillaging in Iraq, the ongoing destruction
is still being tolerated. A European female colleague and an
Iraqi lady archaeologist report that in Babylon, the most famous
city of Antiquity, looting and burning had continued up until
a few days ago. Among others, the documentation of Iraqi excavations
there has been burned. As in Baghdad, representatives of the
Department of Antiquities pleaded in vain with US troops, who
had housed themselves in one of Saddam's palaces, only to be
told: "This is not our order"
The 15 universities of Iraq have been
totally looted and burned. Only the University of Baghdad in
Djadaria remained untouched. There, Americans had made their
headquarters. Of the infrastructure of the Mustansanja University,
along with that of Bologna the oldest in the world, nothing has
been left -- even fixed installations were dismantled -- including
the electrical wall-sockets, and the campus burned down. On the
campus of the Arts Faculty of the University of Baghdad in Wazinja
almost everything has been destroyed, also its Department of
Archaeology, which as extension of the Iraqi Museum delineates
the sources of the more than 5'000 year-old period of high culture.
The fires have caused several buildings to collapse. Of the Library
of the Germanistic Section, which contained over 15'000 volumes,
only solidified slagheaps of ash remain.
In the meantime, professors and students
have begun clearing up the debris. Even this is difficult: the
gasoline reserves of Baghdad are being depleted, station after
station is closing down, to get gas, one must line up for up
to five hours, the price of gasoline has risen tenfold, and one
can no longer afford to drive to the university. Some rooms have
been provisionally reopened, individuals pay for padlocks out
of their own pockets, so that their work is not destroyed anew.
On May 17, the universities are scheduled
to reopen -- without furniture, libraries, paper, or administrational
records. Not textbooks and computers, but brooms and shovels,
will be the most important working tools now, and the lecturers
will have to each science from memory alone. Many wish to do
it for the sake of the students, so that they will not lose an
entire year.
"Under Saddam, it was bad, but now
it is worse. Why was this done to us?" asked the director
of the Department of Archaeology of the University of Baghdad:
"Our future looms darkly. We have trust in nothing. We only
wish to survive."
Walter Sommerfeld is Professor of Oriental Philology in Marburg,
and has toured Iraq for the past 20 years. He was one of the
first German scientists to visit Iraq after the war.
Yesterday's
Features
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaioui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
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