Although repeatedly warned of it’s importance to world history, the military failed to prevent looting at the Iraqi National Museum, leaving 5,000 years of written records, irreplaceable cultural history, to be destroyed. The oldest examples of human writing, clay tablets containing cuneiform are gone.
“It’s extraordinary,” says Joan Aruz, curator in charge of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s of the utmost significance, not only for the cultural heritage of Iraq, but also for the rest of the world. The museum contained the greatest work of art created in the first cities. The loss is just outstanding. I haven’t gotten over the shock.”
Rumsfeld’s response:”The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over,” he said, “and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, ‘My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?'”
Of course, this is overlooking the fact that that vase is probably the oldest object created by man and worth over a billion dollars.
Apparently, the military is stationed to defend Iraq’s oil wells, leaving it’s people, hospitals and civic infrastructure to be looted and destroyed. “Protecting people should be a primary responsibility of any power that expects to enter a country and justifies its intervention on the basis of liberating the people or protecting their rights.”