Iraq to reopen museum looted in US invasion chaos

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s restored National Museum is reopening Tuesday, nearly six years after looters carried away antiquities and treasures as U.S. troops stood by in the chaos of Saddam Hussein’s fall from power.

The museum, rededicated Monday, was among hundreds of institutions — universities, hospitals, cultural offices — ransacked during the lawless aftermath of Saddam’s ouster. It became a symbol for critics of Washington’s inability to maintain order amid the disintegration of Iraq’s police and military.

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Iraq to reopen museum looted in US invasion chaos

“Washington’s inability to maintain order” sums it up pretty well I believe. I’m not a big *museum* goer, never really have been, but I am pleased the Iraqis have been able to restore their national museum, these things are important to the people!

When asked at the time why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld famously said, “Stuff happens … and it’s untidy and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

That statement from Donald Rumsfeld is the biggest *cop out* I have heard in quite a while. The U.S. military went into Iraq, under orders from George W. Bush, under the auspices of the DoD, Rumsfeld, and did exactly what was planned BY Bush and Rumsfeld. They deposed Saddam, they defeated his Republican Guard and dispersed his police, and we hear Mission accomplished!

As far as Bush and Rumsfeld were concerned, it really was mission accomplished, that was what they wanted to do, our troops followed orders and it was a done deal.

Others claimed the U.S. troops lacked a clear mandate to act from Washington.

The above line is, in my opinion, a lot closer to the truth than any in the Bush administration would have cared for the general public ever know. The Bush administration had no more idea of what their next move needed to be than I have regarding a solution to the financial crisis we are suffering, a crisis that I blame, at least in part, on the BILLIONS of tax dollars that have been wasted on what was, and has been fully substantiated to have been, an unnecessary mission.

Our foray into Iraq, on the whim of George W. Bush, has cost us the lives over 4,200 service men and women, and has wasted untold BILLIONS of dollars while costing us even MORE lives and dollars yet to be spent in the retaking of Afghanistan. The real War on Terror was there, in Afghanistan, but Bush took the focus off of Afghanistan with HIS claims of terror support from Baghdad, and with the threats that the American people faced from the WMDs that Saddam supposedly possessed and was in the process of directing against the USA, in what I am guessing Bush believed to be an imminent attack. That was the premise anyway.

The glib quip by Rumsfeld, “Stuff happens“, pretty much says it all regarding any planning or preparation by the Bush administration. We took Saddam and Company out, a job we didn’t need to do in my opinion, but, once we took them out, Iraq, it’s people, their safety and well being, their protection and everything that goes along with it, became our clear and immediate responsibility.

When WWII ended we stepped in and provided a benevolent, yet demanding leadership of Germany and Japan, we did NOT allow the German or Japanese people to just ‘run wild’. Our nation helped rebuild the nations that we had defeated after a long and bitter World War, but during that rebuilding, we administered those nations as their infrastructure was rebuilt as well. The lessons of history would have served Bush and his cronies well, if they had only studied those lessons history.

Which reminds me of a line from The Wizard of Oz, ‘If I only had a brain’…