REAL ART GUEST BLOGGER:
On Looting and the Occupation

My old friend, Brian, emails from L.A.:

So you know, I do keep up with your blog and enjoy reading it. I've got a minor challenge for you on the site, at least in regards to the Baghdad museum looting. There have been a good half dozen stories in the past 10 days that (thankfully) the looting from the Iraqi Museum wasn't nearly as bad as had been recently reported. I saw the first report when I accidentally caught some of Scarborough Country on MSNBC (ever catch that Muppet Head? A sorry, poor man's version of Brian Mitchell who ain't that hot himself although he grows on me). He was railing on the liberal media (so he lost me right away) but had some BBC guy stationed in Baghdad who was saying that the AP reporter responsible for the story exaggerated the loss for the story's drama. Now, in 2 articles in 2 days afterwards the LA Times (a toe-the-country-line paper that strays occasionally) has reported that, in fact, the musuem wasn't hit as hard as originally thought.....

http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2Dwar%2Dmuseum17may17§ion=/printstory

http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2D051603museum%5Flat§ion=/printstory

So, since you always cite fairness, etc. I think it only fair that you run the update in the same way you ran the original story. Don't bury the Page 1 story fix on page 12 ala the NY Times....... :)

Fair enough, Brian. Consider your comments and links a Real Art update on the looting situation. The truth about not yet commenting myself is laziness. I just hadn't gotten round to it...

Brian further writes:

I saw another piece on the news the other night, and the situation over there is finally becoming clear, at least why everything has turned into a farce. The unreported story that no one wants to print is this: Rumsfeld's plan of lighter, leaner forces doesn't win the war. It wins the battles, but leaves insufficient strength to win the peace. With 300,000 troops over there how can you police the country? If you figure every troop works a 12 hour shift, that leaves only 150,000 over the entire country. The numbers are there, but no one wants to call out Rumsfeld, or they'll never get called on again at his sessions. Pathetic.

Resources are finite, and if they don't make good decisions, they're f*cked. And it looks like we really are....

I ask myself, how do we go into there, and then allow nuclear sites to be looted? Thus, eliminating the most cogent element of any pro-war stance: control of the bad stuff, wherever it is. We're short handed and bloated in military bureaucracy: the piece I saw last night followed a squad of soldiers as they received their orders for the day: a stolen electric generator is sitting in a part of Baghdad. Proof of it being stolen? A letter from some official in Kurdistan. Good enough for the US military. They arrive to confiscate it, but the neighborhood shows up and says 'this generator's been here for 5 years, it isn't stolen.' Orders being orders, the GIs argue with the residents (Iraqi cops are there too) but take it anyways, leaving a neighborhood in Baghdad in the dark...So. We're short handed and making bone headed decisions on the street. Maybe the generator was stolen 10 years ago? Who knows, but even after it all went down the captain said it best 'We certainly didn't need to go and do that.' But - he still followed orders. Wish I could remember which of the stations I saw it on, cuz I'd like to send you a link on that. I think it was CBS, but they got nothing on their site.

Sadly, five minutes of Googling didn't turn up anything--I don't think everything that runs on air is always posted, anyway. It does sound believable, though, and I've read about similar events. Anybody out there have a link to this story? Send it in.

Anyway, thanks for your comments, Brian. You're always welcome at Real Art (unless you become a neo-Nazi or something, which isn't likely).

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