Talk:National Museum of Iraq

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	National Museum of Iraq is part of the WikiProject Iraq, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Iraq on the Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
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It was my understanding that initial reports of the artifacts' destruction were way overblown, that very few items of value were actually lost. Worth following up and possibly correcting on this point?

It was corrected. If you read the follow-up reports carefully, they do not say that very few items were lost, just an unknown number that was considerably less than the full extent of the collection. Some U.S. media sources liked to imply that very few were lost and that initial reports were entirely off base, but that implication is just that.--The Cunctator

Many priceless objects are still missing as of September 2003. And PBS has reported that tens of thousands of artifacts were plundered from the archaeological sites around the country and hauled off across the border to Syria or Saudi Arabia. If you imagine someone destroying a "very few items of value" to us Americans -- the Statue of Liberty, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, Lincoln's head at the Lincoln Memorial, the Liberty Bell, Jamestown, the Alamo, Gettysburg, the White House, the Smithsonian, and setting fire to the Library of Congress, all in one day -- I think what happened in Iraq was much, much worse.

The page would be much more interesting and informative if it contained much more on the contents of the museum. By reading the article, all that one can glean is that it contained Nimrud artifacts. Other than that by-the-by mention, there's no mention of what all the museum contained. I, personally, know of some of the exhibits, but in order for an uninformed person to appreciate the tragedy of the looting, you have to understand what was looted. And that is certainly missing from the article. --patton1138 17:23, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most of the stolen items are unaccounted for, but some private collectors in the Middle East and Europe have admitted possessing objects bearing the initials IM [1]

[edit] Needs work from Bogdanos' Thieves of Baghdad

This article needs filling in (and possibly spinning off the theft completely into a separate article) from Bogdanos' book, Thieves of Baghdad. Bogdanos, a Marine reservist who is a New York City prosecutor by day and classicist by training, lead the team that investigated the thefts and launched a recovery program for the stolen pieces. I have filled in some from his Gazette piece, but there are many available online:[2] or via print sources; I recall Time did a piece on him.

And yes, I will write up an article on him...when my to-do list gets shorter.--Mmx1 02:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Update required

From Simon Jenkins's article in The Guardian: When I visited the museum six months later, its then director, Donny George, proudly showed me the best he was making of a bad job. He was about to reopen, albeit with half his most important objects stolen. The pro-war lobby had stopped pretending that the looting was nothing to do with the Americans, who were shamefacedly helping retrieve stolen objects under the dynamic US colonel, Michael Bogdanos (author of a book on the subject). Today the picture is transformed. Donny George fled for his life last August after death threats. The national museum is not open but shut. Nor is it just shut. Its doors are bricked up, it is surrounded by concrete walls and its exhibits are sandbagged. Even the staff cannot get inside. There is no prospect of reopening.[3] --Ghirla^-трёп- 07:20, 8 June 2007 (UTC)