I too would like people to footnote what they say or provide better documentation if this discussion is to continue.  Research that goes beyond newspaper accounts might also help those who are offering  an argument to better form their thoughts and to test their thinking before presenting it to the group.

I can read  newspapers on my own time so please don't use the list to rehash what is out there. Your intentions are good but this is getting repetitive.

Maria

John Martinson wrote:
James, can you please provide the group with your documentation for your
statement:
"When this line first opened it was the military through orders of
leadership who refused to guard precious treasures in the museums and
libraries of Iraq."   Do you have copies or evidence of orders given NOT to
provide security and guards around 5,000 museums and historical sites, PLUS
all the hospitals and other buildings?   Especially, since the area was not
totally secured and hostile action was still taking place in Baghdad.  Could
that statement be simply be personal bias and opinion?  Thanks.

Back in the battle......

John


----- Original Message -----
From: "James Schulte" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 7:21 AM
Subject: Re: Iraqis, looting and the press


  
    Ok I promised to remain hush on this issue but I have to somewhat
    
agree
  
with Deb. When this line first opened it was the military through orders
    
of
  
leadership who refused to guard precious treasures in the museums and
libraries of Iraq. As we all found out , experts in the field warned the
Bush administration months before they invaded this country of this
possibility and the need to protect these treasures. This went on deaf
    
ears
  
and resulted in three  resignations in protest to the Washington
Comission.As time progressed it wasn't the citizens of Iraq attempting to
smuggle these artifacts out of the country but a few foolhardy soldiers
    
and
  
news coorespondants.As for the media sensationalizing this event , I
    
believe
  
the media has sensationalized the war as a whole and will act upon this
stoory and others.A question was posed on the group earlier in this line I
believe and it was "How do we educate our children about this war?" I have
sat back and contemplated this question because it is very complex. What
    
to
  
teach is the complexity.We have seen journalism reach a new level, we have
seen what once was a coalition united separated, we have seen world
organizations created for peace torn apart and used as a ploy and
unfortuneately as an american we have thus far seen our President, his
Secretary of State , and our Secretary of Defense use forged documants and
irresponsible evidence to justify this objective and come up empty
handed.Through all this I have still given Bush the benefit of the doubt,
but daily this doubt decreases. We claim to be the worlds most powerful
country, we claim to have had such conclusive evidence as to where all
    
this
  
crap Saddam Hussein stored and was building, but to maintain world peace
    
we
  
chose not to share this information with the United Nations. We chose not
    
to
  
listen to the worlds experts as to the priceless artifacts and what would
occur in an invasion. Well I'm sorry but when you have a Bush, Dick and
Colon running a country are any of you surprised?I as an African American
    
ad
  
mired Colin Powell, but have lost confidence in his leadership
    
capabilities
  
as of late because he played into this crap.The jouranlist do have a
responsibility in this conflict and it is reporting, and normally it is
    
bias
  
and geared to sympathy.As a historian I dont know what to teach children
about this war, there are so many angles, so much information, I just hope
it doesn't come down in a mandate from Bush administrations Department of
Education
----- Original Message -----
From: "Deb Fuller" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 9:43 PM
Subject: Iraqis, looting and the press


    
You know, I don't think I've seen one message in the whole looting
      
discussion
    
about how the press has really distorted this whole issue. Yet people on
      
this
    
list - who are probably better educated than 99% of the world's
      
population -
    
are quick to belive what they read and slam the US and the troops for
      
first not
    
protecting the museum adequately and then for trying to gloss over the
      
whole
    
incident.

Could it be that the press - to use a quaint Southern expression - is
      
"letting
    
its mockingbird mouth get ahead of its jaybird behind"? (Sanitized for
propriety's sake. ;)

I live in the Washington, DC area and during the sniper attacks of last
      
year,
    
got a very eye-opening view of how quickly the press is to jump on a
      
little
    
fact, irregardless of its significance or validity, and make a
      
full-blown
  
story
    
out of it. I had just been laid off so needless to say I wasn't sleeping
      
well
    
and spent many nights flipping channels. After one attack, the vehicle
description of the "sniper van" literally changed every hour. The main
      
suspect
    
vehicles for the whole incident were a white box truck or a white cargo
      
van.
    
For this shooting, it started out that way, then turned to a cream
      
colored
  
van,
    
then a cream colored van with right tail light out, then a cream colored
      
van
    
with the left tail light out, then it was a cream colored van with just
      
a
  
tail
    
light out but also keep looking for that box truck and that ubiquitious
      
white
    
cargo van. When the sniper was finally caught, he was in a blue Chevy
hatchback. Yet the press had everyone in the area practically in a panic
      
every
    
time they saw a white cargo van, one of the most common vehicles on the
      
road.
    
During the war, the press was criticized for reporting just the war and
      
doing
    
very little commentating on it. Wow, for once they were just doing their
      
jobs.
    
It's kind of hard to spin information if you are on the battlefield and
      
getting
    
shot at and have strict controls on what you are allowed to say. But now
      
it
    
seems like the press is more than making up for it by latching on to any
      
little
    
story and running with it. The US press is very liberal as a whole and
      
doesn't
    
like Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld or getting into this war but rallied
      
around
  
the
    
troops like everyone else. Now the main fighting is over and they are
      
back
  
to
    
picking on the troops, and the whole Bush administration. I'm sure some
      
of
  
it
    
is warrented like the lack of planning for looting. But I'm really
      
skeptical
    
about how blown off UNESCO experts were or how little the troops did to
      
stop
    
the looting. Given that in the sniper case, a blue Chevy hatchback was
      
turned
    
into a white box truck, cargo van and cream colored van with a tail
      
light
  
out,
    
I'm not surprised to hear that the Iraqi museum went from completely
      
stripped
    
to "Oh, sorry, we forgot we put all these artifacts down here. We really
      
only
    
lost about 30 or 40." Loosing artifacts is tragic, don't get me wrong,
      
but
  
it's
    
a far cry from a bunch of troops sitting on their duffs while people
      
blithely
    
walked in and carted off 4000 years of history.

So people, please. Don't jump to conclusions about what is in the press.
      
Like
    
most major happenings, the whole truth rarely comes out until many years
afterwards when it can be looked at objectively from all angles. Right
      
now,
    
we're too close to the entire war to really understand what happened,
      
what
  
went
    
wrong and the major impacts of it and probably won't be in a position to
understand it for years to come.

Deb

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