2003/04/09

       The Fall of Baghdad (Iraq): United states Army General Tommy Franks (private mercenary), commanding the U.s. Central Command marches into Baghdad. 

       NOTE: Instead of safeguarding Iraq’s cultural heritage, as is the duty of an occupying power, the U.S. Armed Forces permitted wholesale looting of the Baghdad’s National Museum, allowing the following artifacts to be pillaged (although this is by no means an exhaustive list):

• the Sacred Vase of Warka, a Sumerian alabaster piece more than 5,000 years old; 
• a bronze Uruk statue from the Akkadian period, also 5,000 years old, which weighs 660 pounds;
• the Mask of Warka;
• the Bassetki Statue, a life-size statue of a young man, estimated to be 4,300 years old;
• the headless stone statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash, estimated to be 4,400 years old;
• the Harp of Ur was torn apart by looters who removed its gold;
• the stone statue of King Schalmanezer, about 2,800 years old;
• the Lioness Attacking a Nubian, a 2,900 years old gold-and-ivory plaque from the ancient city of Hatra.

       Postscripts:

• Five days later, thousands of manuscripts up to seven millennia old were lost as the Iraq National Library and National Archives were burned.
• During the next four years,
  • Over one-thousand car bombs killed 78,000 Iraqi citizens;
  • Over 600,000 Iraqi citizens died from other types of violence than would not have occurred had the Iraqi-American War not happened; and
  • Over 2,000,000 Iraqi citizens left their nation as war refugees

        [restored 11/7/2025] Thanks to Jim Lorenz for this entry.