Iraq Museum Plundered

[Knife]

It's not my job to prove your claims. You are claiming that, unlike almost every crowd control situation that happens in the modern world, somehow lethal force will be required to control these people. Please prove that

Neither is it our job to prove your claims. You seem to think that a couple soldiers or Marines sitting either infront of the museum and/or inside it will disuade the looters with out using lethal force. Prove your case, how the hell are they expected to do that.

Moving a hundred troops to protect the museum durring the fight would have been stupid. We may have enough troops to take the city using the current tactics, but to move a hundred troops to protect a non stategical location rather than a bridge, a command structure, hidden bunkers, and other targets is not the way to take the city. Taking the city and restoring order as fast as possible is the only way to adaquetly protect what you want to protect. Yes some will be sold and/or destroyed while we secure the city and it is a loss, but more would be lost if we go the supress the crowd route and enflame the city to riot and all goes the way of anarchy and anything stolen has the opertunity of being found and returned. Can you say the same for any of the troopers that would die to protect the non stategic site? Will his/hers death quicken the fall of the regiem and/or bring order to the city any quicker?

[Ted]

When you loose all those artefacts, and 99.9% of all information regarding them, it IS a BIG FUCKING DEAL.

To be blunt, 5000 lives is nothing. Thats about the number of deaths in a light firebombing raid in WWII. That's one supercarrier. Thats 0.1% of the population of Baghdad.

What was contained in the Museum was priceless, economically, but worth more than anything else, socially and culturally.

To a capitalist pig, which most of you seem to be, it is nothing. But to an educated person, it is like nothing else.

I didn't expect Mike Wong, of all people, to say "Big deal, it's just a pile of worthless shit." You would think, seeing as he proclaims to be an educated ma, that he would be aghast and outraged at the turn of events.

There is NO way to replace ANY of that which was destroyed. Fine, oil is irreplaceable, but oil is not unique. That history WAS. We will be unable to learn anything new about the Cradle of Civilization, the place where modern technology first came into being.

[Ted]

The administration may be lying about their numbers but the grunt on the ground is not. Watch the embeds, the grunts when asked are very blunt -
"we just don't have enough troops to both act as police men and fight effectively." Fact of the matter is we may have handedly won this war but we are in there with a bare bones force and the Pentagon is doing a nice song and dance about the numbers game.

If the forces on the ground don't have enough support, then why are there regiments setting up camp around oil wells, putting up barbed wire? Wouldn't they be much better off in the city, fighting the Fedayeen and stopping the looting?

[Stravo]

The administration may be lying about their numbers but the grunt on the ground is not. Watch the embeds, the grunts when asked are very blunt -
"we just don't have enough troops to both act as police men and fight effectively." Fact of the matter is we may have handedly won this war but we are in there with a bare bones force and the Pentagon is doing a nice song and dance about the numbers game.

If the forces on the ground don't have enough support, then why are there regiments setting up camp around oil wells, putting up barbed wire? Wouldn't they be much better off in the city, fighting the Fedayeen and stopping the looting?

They are securing the sole source of wealth in Iraq. That oil is going to help rebuild this nation and feed those people. Hammurabi's code is going to feed a single fucking person. Oil is far more valuable in real world terms than some pottery and bits and pieces from a civilization long since gone. We're talking about the here and now. The moment the past becomes more valuable than human lives in the here and now we have lost something vital about ourselves. There is no intrinstic value that can be measured by these artifacts other than what we impart to them. Oil on the other hand has value.

So we are securing the true national treasure of Iraq that one that will bring them back to their feet. Somehow I don't think the tourist draw generated by these ratifact s will ever come close to pumping the amount of money into the Iraqi economy that oil does.

As to your pathetic slander that Capitalists are not eduacted, you're a child, what do you know of education yet? Education is life experience coupled with learning you little shitstain. Once you start living in the real world then get back to me.

[Graeme Dice]

Oil on the other hand has value.

Oil has no intrinsic value beyond what we impart to it. There is no such thing as intrinsic value.

[Stravo]

Oil on the other hand has value.

Oil has no intrinsic value beyond what we impart to it. There is no such thing as intrinsic value.

Oil does NOT fuel our engines of commerce and heat our homes?

[Graeme Dice]

Neither is it our job to prove your claims. You seem to think that a couple soldiers or Marines sitting either infront of the museum and/or inside it will disuade the looters with out using lethal force. Prove your case, how the hell are they expected to do that.

I expect them to do that in the same way they were already accomplishing it before they left.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/ ... 78179.html
"The ransacking of the museum took two days - interrupted only for 30 minutes when pleading staff persuaded members of a marine tank unit to go to the museum and scare the looters with a few warning shots over their heads."

http://hnn.us/articles/1386.html
The army has now decided that the museum needs protection, but apparently it takes international outrage to accomplish that.

Further, it's another illegality in this war, in that the troops are required under the Geneva conventions to protect cultural sites.

The army was apparently able to protect the Ministry of Oil.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/mid ... ory=397004

Further, it was not thousands of people, but several dozen.
"Gangs of several dozen came," he said. "Some had guns. They threatened to kill us if we did not open up. The looting went on for two days."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0, ... 30,00.html

So where's your evidence that it would have required killing large numbers of civilians?

[neoolong]

Oil on the other hand has value.

Oil has no intrinsic value beyond what we impart to it. There is no such thing as intrinsic value.

Oil does NOT fuel our engines of commerce and heat our homes?

Actually that's applied value.

If I get him correctly, then we only apply a value to oil because we need it, to fuel our engines, etc.

But if it had intrinsic value it would have been valuable to say really really primitive man, before fire. When it pretty much had no use to them. Would it have the same intrinsic value to them?

[Graeme Dice]

Oil does NOT fuel our engines of commerce and heat our homes?

It is not required in any way, shape, or form for our daily survival. It only has value because we have created a market for it.

[Stravo]

Oil does NOT fuel our engines of commerce and heat our homes?

It is not required in any way, shape, or form for our daily survival. It only has value because we have created a market for it.

I concede the point on intrinsic value, as I read the point now but it IS more valuable than anything in the museum. As stated before it is the oil that will get Iraq back on its feet NOT its museums. We have an ecnomy of force. We have to deploy where they will do the most good because we don't have the troops to police right now so we had to chose between securing the nation's source of wealth or its culture. You can't eat, breath, house or live on culture. You can do these things with the money oil provides.

[HemlockGrey]

It is not required in any way, shape, or form for our daily survival. It only has value because we have created a market for it.

Exactly, and ancient pottery has no market. Will cultural artifacts fuel our cars? Will they warm our homes? Will they power our grills?

Will cultural artifacts rebuild Iraq? Will they restore it's shattered economy? Will they modernize it and bring to it up to speed with the rest of the world? If torched, will they cause an ecological catastrophe?

No, they will not.

Yes, cultural artifacts are important. Yes, it is bad that they have been lost. But in no way, shape, or form should securing a museum take precedence over destroying military targets, securing the city, overruning enemy posisitions, and defending critical economic resources.

[Graeme Dice]

It is not required in any way, shape, or form for our daily survival. It only has value because we have created a market for it.

Exactly, and ancient pottery has no market. Will cultural artifacts fuel our cars? Will they warm our homes? Will they power our grills?

No market for ancient pottery? What rock are you living under? Pothunters and looters don't desecrate sites for the fun of it. They do it because there's lots of money involved. Anasazi pottery from the Southwest U.S. is only 500 years old and individual repaired pieces go for more than $2000.

Will cultural artifacts rebuild Iraq? Will they restore it's shattered economy? Will they modernize it and bring to it up to speed with the rest of the world? If torched, will they cause an ecological catastrophe?

No, they will not.

Yes, cultural artifacts are important. Yes, it is bad that they have been lost. But in no way, shape, or form should securing a museum take precedence over destroying military targets, securing the city, overruning enemy posisitions, and defending critical economic resources.

In 100 years, Iraq won't have any oil, and the only economic resource it will have will be its cultural ones.

[Darth Wong]

What original site? Performing an archaeological excavation destroys the site itself. Without the artifacts, you have no basis for history, and without that, you might as well declare that it was Martians who taught us how to farm, because there would be just as much evidence.

As long as we retain the knowledge to farm, what difference does it make? And Occam's Razor would nullify that Martian theory.

No, it woulddn't nullify that theory if no evidence existed to show that there were other better theories. Without the supporting evidence and artifacts, anything said about the past is just conjecture.

You obviously have no comprehension of Occam's Razor. I suggest you do some research.

[HemlockGrey]

No market for ancient pottery? What rock are you living under? Pothunters and looters don't desecrate sites for the fun of it. They do it because there's lots of money involved. Anasazi pottery from the Southwest U.S. is only 500 years old and individual repaired pieces go for more than $2000.

The market for ancient pottery exists entirely with collectors, museums, and rich history buffs. The market for oil spans the world and includes the governments, industries, and manufactors of nearly every nation.

In 100 years, Iraq won't have any oil, and the only economic resource it will have will be its cultural ones.

And unless we secure that oil, Iraq won't exist 100 years from now.

[Darth Wong]

"Damn, can't you realize" is not an actual argument. What objective value is there in such trinkets, once we have already documented them?

What documentation? The computers that held the records have been smashed. Museums keep documentation with the artifacts themselves.

Are you saying we know nothing whatsoever about these artifacts? Take the Rosetta stone for example; if it was destroyed, what difference would it make now? It's already been studied.

[Graeme Dice]

You obviously have no comprehension of Occam's Razor. I suggest you do some research.

I suggest that you instead learn how to reason logically. Without cultural artifacts we have no evidence whatsoever for what happened in the past. Any book or history that tells us what happened in the past is nothing more than conjecture without those artifacts to provide support. Martians are defeated by Occam's razor, but without any evidence you cannot say that one side of an argument is supported by an argument and the other is not.

[Graeme Dice]

Are you saying we know nothing whatsoever about these artifacts? Take the Rosetta stone for example; if it was destroyed, what difference would it make now? It's already been studied.

For one, if it was destroyed, then 500 years from now people will be having arguments as to whether the copies are accurate instead of simply using them.

As for the other artifacts, if the museum records are destroyed, then we have no way to tell what the artifacts were, or any other information about them. The archaeologists who dug them up initially might still have the records, but in all likelihood they simply turned them over to the museum. After all, that's why museums exist.

Take for instance the relatively recent research that used skeletons collected on the steppes of Asia decades ago to show that there were indeed female warriors in the very far distant past. Without those skeletons, there would have been no way to test the truth of the matter.

[Graeme Dice]

The market for ancient pottery exists entirely with collectors, museums, and rich history buffs. The market for oil spans the world and includes the governments, industries, and manufactors of nearly every nation.

Thank you for conceding that a market for ancient pottery exists.

And unless we secure that oil, Iraq won't exist 100 years from now.

Are you actually trying to tell me that there will be a mass exodus of everyone living in the country and that nobody will be there 100 years from now if the U.S. government doesn't protect the Ministry of Oil?

[HemlockGrey]

Thank you for conceding that a market for ancient pottery exists.

This does nothing to disprove my originial point- oil is more important than ancient pottery. You ignored the entire second half of my reply. The market for ancient pottery is MINISCULE compared to the market for oil. Oil is absolutely essential to A) The world economy and B) the reconstruction of Iraq. Pottery is important to neither.

Are you actually trying to tell me that there will be a mass exodus of everyone living in the country and that nobody will be there 100 years from now if the U.S. government doesn't protect the Ministry of Oil?

The only thing Iraq has that is of any value is oil. There are no gold mines, no massive corporations, and tourism tends to drop off when the nation in question is a featureless desert.

The US cannot single-handly burden all of Iraq's finanical problems, and if Russia, France, etc. gets involved it will only because of one thing- OIL!

Oil is the key to the rebuilding of Iraq. If that oil is not secured, processed, refined, and exported, Iraq has no economic future and thus no future at all. No outside nation will bother to step in and help it and it will have nothing of value to sell. It will not be able to function, the new Iraqi government will not be able to stabilize, and the State of Iraq will cease to exist, either because it has devolved into a land of bickering warlords and near-Stone Age living conditions or the people will simply die off.

[Graeme Dice]

The only thing Iraq has that is of any value is oil. There are no gold mines, no massive corporations, and tourism tends to drop off when the nation in question is a featureless desert.

Exactly. Which means that you are willing to throw away the only thing of lasting value in the country for the sake of short term gains.

The US cannot single-handly burden all of Iraq's finanical problems, and if Russia, France, etc. gets involved it will only because of one thing- OIL!

Bullshit. The U.S. is the biggest economy in the world. If it can't afford to rebuild the economy without selling Iraqi Oil then the war is really about nothing more than oil.

You still haven't shown that the oil was under any significant danger either.

[Dahak]

The only thing Iraq has that is of any value is oil. There are no gold mines, no massive corporations, and tourism tends to drop off when the nation in question is a featureless desert.

Actually, before the first war, and the sanctions, Iraq had a huge agrarian industry.

[Pu-239]

Well the museum stuff is important for tourism.. then again the money from that is a drop in the bucket.

[Wicked Pilot]

To be blunt, 5000 lives is nothing. Thats about the number of deaths in a light firebombing raid in WWII. That's one supercarrier. Thats 0.1% of the population of Baghdad.

What was contained in the Museum was priceless, economically, but worth more than anything else, socially and culturally.

The true Ted shows his colors. I guess we should have used bio weapons to kill every citizen of Bagdad without damaging the artifacts. That would have been the thing to do, right Ted?

[Dahak]

To be blunt, 5000 lives is nothing. Thats about the number of deaths in a light firebombing raid in WWII. That's one supercarrier. Thats 0.1% of the population of Baghdad.

What was contained in the Museum was priceless, economically, but worth more than anything else, socially and culturally.

The true Ted shows his colors. I guess we should have used bio weapons to kill every citizen of Bagdad without damaging the artifacts. That would have been the thing to do, right Ted?

Well, humans are replenishable. Cultural and historical artifacts are not.

[Ted]

To be blunt, 5000 lives is nothing. Thats about the number of deaths in a light firebombing raid in WWII. That's one supercarrier. Thats 0.1% of the population of Baghdad.

What was contained in the Museum was priceless, economically, but worth more than anything else, socially and culturally.

The true Ted shows his colors. I guess we should have used bio weapons to kill every citizen of Bagdad without damaging the artifacts. That would have been the thing to do, right Ted?

The right thing to do would have been NOT TO ATTACK IRAQ.

But as Bush has his head up his ass, thats too late now.