Posted by
Tony Hubble on Sunday, November 22, 2009 12:00:00 AM
I wrote about this way back in 2005 when I was in the Middle East. I had several conversations with our troops on R/R from Iraq. One of their favorite subjects was how full of crap the mainstream media’s coverage in Iraq was at the time. Stuff like reporting from the Green Zone while embedded and never going out on patrol with the troops. This issue came up time and again. The troops were very offended as they took great pains to be sensitive to the Iraqi culture and the civilian populace. The took great pains to be careful, as directed by their leadership, to then just see themselves raked over the coals by these idiots in the press whose sole agenda was to lambast the President. Then again, my cousin, who was working for Blackwater at the time, did pride himself on peeing in Saddam Hussein’s pool. Guess we aint all perfect.
Damage to Iraqi Antiquities was Media Hype
American-led coalition forces were blamed for the destruction of Iraqi antiquities following the 2003 invasion, including inflicting serious damage to the ancient site of Babylon.
But reports of extensive damage have turned out to be largely media hype, according to Forbes magazine columnist Melik Kaylan.
Writing in Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Kaylan noted that John Curtis, head of the British Museum's Middle East Department, was "the single most persistent source" of reports on the supposed destruction.
In January 2005, the BBC reported that "coalition forces in Iraq have caused irreparable damage to the ancient city of Babylon," attributing the disclosure to the British Museum.
The BBC said "sandbags have been filled with precious archaeological fragments and 2,600-year-old paving stones have been crushed by tanks."
Curtis went on to say later that a coalition helicopter base had caused cracks in the bas-reliefs on Babylon's original walls.
A story the Boston Globe stated that "Iraq's U.S.-led invaders inflicted serious damage on Babylon, driving heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops, and digging trenches through one of the world's greatest archaeological sites."
But this year Curtis began to step away from his earlier claims, acknowledging that Saddam Hussein "had already caused grievous harm to the site in various ways" before the invasion, Kaylan observed in The Journal.
And a memoir published in April by Emilio Marrero, who was chaplain of the Marine Expeditionary Force that first secured Babylon from looters in 2003, said the site was already in poor condition and U.S. forces worked to protect and preserve it.
Marrero told Kaylan that the helicopter base was "up to two football fields away" from the area of supposed damage and the cracks in the bas-reliefs were there before the invasion.
He also discounted allegations that tanks had crushed paving stones and archaeological fragments were used to fill sandbags, saying they were in fact filled with earth.
Kaylan disclosed that Curtis made a June 2008 trip to Iraq along with Elizabeth Stone from Stony Brook University in New York, and found "little or no post-Saddam damage" in southern Iraq's eight most important archaeological sites.
"They did not visit Babylon in the north," Kaylan wrote, "but the places they saw covered a full fifth of the entire landmass of Iraq — all relatively undamaged."
The National Museum in Iraq has now been reopened to the public, with most of its greatest treasures back on display, Kaylan adds, because "the museum's most valuable items were locked away in a vault, untouched by looters."