The Iraqi Museum meme that will not die
I don’t know why I bother with the AP anymore. Maybe it’s because their articles permeate most of the newspapers in the country, and become the reality for so many readers.
And so today we have the re-opening of the National Museum of Iraq. Here’s how the AP’s Sameer N. Yacoub presents it:
Iraq’s restored National Museum reopened Monday with a red-carpet gala in the heart of Baghdad nearly six years after looters carried away priceless antiquities as American troops largely stood by in the chaos of the city’s fall to U.S. forces.
The ransacking of the museum became a symbol for critics of Washington’s post-invasion strategy and its inability to maintain order as Saddam Hussein’s police and military unraveled…
Once the home of one of the world’s leading collections of artifacts, the museum fell victim to bands of armed thieves who rampaged through the capital after the Americans captured Baghdad in April 2003.
It was among many institutions looted across Iraq, including universities, hospitals and cultural offices. But the richness of the museum’s collection ”” and its importance as the caretaker of Iraq’s historical identity ”” led to an outcry around the world.
U.S. troops, the sole power in the city at the time, were intensely criticized for not protecting the treasures at the museum and other cultural institutions like the national library and the Saddam Art Center, a museum of modern Iraqi art.
It goes on. And on. And every word of it is true—and misleading.
It’s not till paragraph fifteen that we find a tiny mention of exculpating evidence:
It could have been worse. Iraqi officials closed the museum several weeks before the U.S.-led invasion and hid some particularly important artifacts at secret locations to prevent their theft.
But still, a person could read the entire article without ever learning that (a) a very tiny percentage of the artifacts were stolen; and (b) many of the thefts were inside jobs that probably occurred before the Americans even got there.
The extent of the looting of Iraq’s National Museum has been disputed. News organizations for weeks reported that as much as 100 percent of the museum’s 170,000 catalogued lots (501,000 pieces) had been looted, when no more than 3 percent of the artifacts in fact were removed, and perhaps only 1 percent of them stolen by outside looters…About 15,000 of the museum’s 501,000 artifacts were stolen, and about two-thirds of the missing pieces probably were taken in an inside job before American troops arrived. About 5,000 pieces, most of them tiny beads and amulets, were taken by looters. According to The Washington Post (Sept. 15, 2003), investigator Col. Matthew Bogdanos estimated that most of the looted items could have fit into one large backpack…[T]the number of major pieces removed from the museum’s public gallery was in the dozens.
Yacoub and the AP either don’t know these facts, or they are well aware of them and have carefully crafted the article to mislead (read: lie) by omission. A reader who remembers the original reports of utter museum devastation could read the new article and continue to believe that this was the case. Nice going, AP!
I remember reading the truth about the “looting” several weeks after the MSM impugned the US forces for not anticipating the crimes. How they could have prevented occurences before they even arrived escapes me. I’d say the Iraqis who perpetrated the crimes were the ones responsible. Do we hold police responsible when robberies are committed?
Even Smithsonian magazine did better in a recent issue. That’s pretty bad.
This is pretty much like the Katrina coverage which was also pretty much true but misleadingly presented. Once the media settle on a narrative, particularly a compelling one that harms Republicans, they are extremely reluctant to abandon or even to modify it.
written to fool skimmers who read the first paragraph and the last to get the gist and plow through more.
Here’s an interesting article written in the Summer of 2003 by a reporter for ARTnews who went to the museum to report on what actually happened. Conclusion: The U.S Army did not stop the looting because the museum was being used as a fighting position by the Iraqi Army.
Sorry, html tagging didn’t seem to work – here’s the link:
http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1368
I have come to the conclusion that reporters don’t know what’s happening and don’t track issues. Rather, I think they are gossips who pass along what they hear and mistake it for reality. Actual reporting takes actual work and that’s no fun.
All lies are permitted if they serve the cause. The cause is getting power for liberals, and keeping it.
I heard this again on the BBC on Sirius last night, clicked it off immediately, amazed that they are still playing this lie years after it’s been discredited. Got to keep the lies going I guess, the propaganda machine can never rest, and when it comes to Iraq, the Brit press is all over the propaganda bit.
(a) a very tiny percentage of the artefacts were stolen; and (b) many of the thefts were inside jobs that probably occurred before the Americans even got there.
neo what evidences you have for above?
Where the resources that support your “misleading” words and statement.
Neo tell us, Paul Bremer transferred some very priceless artefacts from Iraq on claims to put in US museums and to secure them till things get better.
We never heard those artefacts returned to Iraq?
Have you any source where those Iraqi Artefacts went? I hope not vanished like $USD9.0 billions which Paul Bremer he don’t know here gone!!!
If the biggest beef is that we ostensibly failed to protect art sufficiently when the narrative at the time stated that we were only their to rape the women and steal the nation’s oil wealth, neither of which happened, then I consider that story to be a sideways admission that Bush was right to topple the Hussein regime.
This reminds me of an AP story i read the other day about our highway infrastructure “under the crumbling weight of SUV’s”.
These people know no bounds to the transparent absurdities they spew.
Neo, you do know that AP stands for al Propaganda?
here is the mechanics of it.
most people think that prop has to have a goal, and it does, but most people are pretty concrete in their goals. so even when you show them something that htey can see, they say something like, that doesnt work i can see that thats not true.
however, the problem is that they cant fathom the purpose.
they dont ask the rigth questions, and they take certain answers off the table. if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has babies who are ducklings, they call it a penguin.
But still, a person could read the entire article without ever learning that (a) a very tiny percentage of the artifacts were stolen; and (b) many of the thefts were inside jobs that probably occurred before the Americans even got there.
i have brought up hegel, and hegel is a divide and conquer cultural strategy that gets you to see the world in a way in which you dont miss an opportunity to work some power structure. if you see the world in terms of power, you see things you can do that others dont that lead or are means to power (many of them contradictory). if you see the world in terms of something else, you wont see the others nefarious view.
so, if you want to know the most common form of left propaganda, its not some false point. or some lie promoted just that way… no not at all… waht it is is every idea under the sun that creates a dividing position.
fracturing the will of the people.
a nation pulling in 300 million different ways is a natino that goes nowhere. (like the image of the two donkeys with two piles of grain, but they both starve to death pulling at each otehr trying to get to it).
so, each point is a dividing point. and when they discover one, they hammer it. but when they discover a basic technique that they can apply over and over, then they hammer that.
what neo is noticing in the quote, is a etchnique. she knows its annoying… she is a reader of the whole, and a comprehender of the whole. she is the RARE type that is not the target. the target is the split between her, the rare type that reads everything and gets one missive, and the other, who skims and gets a different story from teh same article.
what happens when they meet?
everyone is so self involved that tey cant see that they themselves are unimportant and meaningless. they feel it in nihilism, but they dont undersand its implications and why they cant comprehend whats going on…
its not about getting you to take side A or side B… its about spliting some of us to side A and some of us to side B and pitting them against each other, and doing that along every line you can.
materialism and other dialectics make such mental manipulative ways very easy to understand.
i reaslly dont care what the horse thinks as long as the horse (maerial) moves the way i want it to.
the horses ALWAYS think that their thoughts are important. they are not. not when its someone else who wants to drive the bus. we are always analysing points as to validity, or all manner of lines, but the self confidence (a hidden synonym for pulling a con one oneself, if you like word games like they do), and hubris, and refusal to admit no knowing, all lead to people who think that what they think is important.
so everthing is argued from a point as if their discussions carry great weight… but they dont get that their discussions are wastes of their human energy. if they are discussing a political game with no resolution and in which they have very little ability to change the outcome, WHAT ARE THEY LOSING IN TIME AND ACTION?
from a political leadership view, not the horses view, its a way to get em wrapped up in dead ends. a way to hit the population with a productivity bomb…
so, just as the power view is one of many valid views, the lord on high as master marionette is another view.
its why we dont understand the actions of our leaders. we keep thinking that they are like the past and will act based on principals. but principals negate marx, and principals negate a path to power without responsibility and without merit!!! (otherwisw they would like the other system).
obama is going to run the system into the ground
why?
because he is a radical communist revolutionary, and thats what they do to lock in the change and secure the new power from counter revolution. he will do so, just like his uncle did, and as his freinds wish, and his supporters that put him up want.
the ONLY question is how many times will we as a population be raped before we realize we are being raped?
forgot to add the conclusion, a bad paste job. sorry.
NYT Article Skimmer: Recreate the Sunday Morning Paper in Your Browser
The New York Times just released an interesting new online product that tries to recreate the experience of spreading out the newspaper on Sunday morning. The new ‘article skimmer’ gets back to the basics with a streamlined interface that lets you quickly scan the top headlines in every section of the Times. Basically, this is an experimental new interface for reading the Times online, though the links to the actual articles still take you to the standard NYT pages.
so if the idea is divide, and writing this way informs two behavioral groups differently, waht are those groups, and what is the outcomes of the division?
skimmers are made up of what populatino. the smart and busy left… business men, politicians and policy people. those who feel they need to kno9w some of this, but their time is too taken up with busdiness and things to actually read everything.
and who is the other group? these are the conservatives, those who will trade articles that are worthy of reading in whole. the unemployed who have time… the bored… and so forth…
but the truth is that it doesnt have to work along such hard lines. it can work along soft lines knowing that your going to POLARIZE THE PROLETARIAT into fighting against each other whiel you stand above them and rob their houses.
the people fighting the abortion issue dontr realize that the reason its not resolves is that its intended to keep them busy in a meaningless cause that neither side can effect a end result.
all those politically active people too busy in a dead end cul de sac to actually team together with others and focus on the politicians not the policies.
but i am way too wordy…
can anyone show me how i could explain the principals of psyops and such to people who have no framework, belief, or natural ability?
just leafe through this.. .and remember the political is always tied to the military.
Psychological operations, tactics, techniques, and proceedures
http://ftp.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-301.pdf
read enough and you start to recognize things… and when you become familiar with the games, you start to notive that its certain people or organizations that are playing them (ap, reuters – who owns them? what countries? whats their agenda?)
i will only quote one part.
Psyop are planned operations that convery selected inforamtion and indicators to foreign target audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foriegn governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. the purpose of all psyop is to create in neutral, friendly, or hostilce foreign groups the emotions, attitudes, or desired behaviore that support the achievement of objectives.
to our leaders, we the people are the enemy so we are the foreign targets
and to the radicals, who are basically fifth and sixth column, they are fighting a war in which they would be stopped if they used guns.
i cant shoot your family, it would be too overt, and force will respond.
but i sure can destroy them mentally and walk away… i can screw with their heads, their productivity, and turn an overt violent act, into a lifetime of torture and if sociopathic, feel the power in their helplessness to stop or change their situations.
and ya know what? not onlyu could i do that… but if i did it from an office, with political swag, i could get awards and accolades for doing it!
no group of smart people are this bad without intent.
no group has this much bad luck without intent
and this is why my rape comment. at some point the poor victim realizes that this isnt love, but somethig else.
Whatever the details, the looting of the museum seemed to turn into a good symbol of the invasion.
It seemed to spin out of control from the start and there weren’t enough forces to take control.
It wasn’t until The Surge that things seemed to turn around.
Neo, you do know that AP stands for al Propaganda?
If AP is like that then here we got Hasbara!
It seemed to spin out of control from the start and there weren’t enough forces to take control.
Its looks most of you living in their comfort bubble and gave their “Horses” the leash to run wild.
The reality is the secure doors of Iraqi museum building were demolished by US tank (this was real report and eyewitness) then the looting start.
Some Local Iraqi even reported that US, also British tropes pursued gangs and peoples to loot openly while they standing watching them then the claimed they are not “Policing Forces”, while the international law have his say that the occupier military forces have the duty of secure and keep in order the life and their asset of people and their state.
Let forgot the Iraqi Museum and go further to US and Bremer himself set on Babylon site and made it a Military Camp for years none Iraqi citizen can enter the site, and look what distraction done on site where tones of soil moved and dogged why? Guess what is it’s to make Military camp of to cover the looting for that site? Make wonder.
So who are they the those looters Neoneo?
The troops were armed with grenades and automatic weapons and tanks. This means the troops had the option of massacring the masses at point blank range or letting them loot. I think the troops made the right decision.
If the troops had been trained as cops they would have done better, I suppose. But that came later.
“Drop that vase or I’ll shoot!”, he said.
(Crash!)
Clean up in aisle 1!
(b) many of the thefts were inside jobs that probably occurred before the Americans even got there.
Colonel Matthew Bogdanos
someone (unnamed) had told him that he couldn’t wait till he could go inside the National Museum with US soldiers and give it a good pillage – ie, yes.
This from such a reliable source, he goes by just “George”. I hear John Ramsey and O.J. are looking for someone (unnamed) too.
Lee: my guess is that “Truth” is referring to Donny George. For background on this man, see this and this.
my guess is that “Truth” is referring to Donny George. For background on this man, see this and this.
The main argument here is US military was on the ground, under international law US military “occupied Forces” should protect all the historical sites in Iraq.
What happen with Iraq museum is one part of the story, it’s not all as you may know land of Iraq hosting tens of historical sites none of them US Forces and other forces failed to protect them.
If some trying to play their view by saying because a short of US solder on the ground, YES this one bit we do know that but Iraqi oil ministry was one place that US interest and protected while all the Iraqi ministries burned out…
So if there is a will or real concerns from US official what should do with Iraqi museum then they should take action not left it for looters and gangs either insiders or internationals who came with US troops.
Btw, Neo in same talken about Gorge remember Ahmad Galabi was paid by CIA for years more that $USD400/year what fraudulent guy he were and he is…how supported and buy your adminstartion.