Afghani art treasures emerge from hiding...
Paul at
Wixzbang has some words with the people who thinks that it's Bush's fault that the Baghdad museum was looted and he carries it into the present situation in Afghanistan:
bq.
Bush saves over 25,000 Museum Pieces in Afghanistan
Remember the bogus Baghdad museum story? For those of you who missed it, after Baghdad fell, the media ran wild with the story that the Baghdad museum was looted and 30,000+ pieces were stolen or destroyed. This was blamed exclusively on George Bush.
bq. The media even reported many times that the Oil Ministry was guarded but the Museum was not, outraging the Bush haters.
bq. The problem was of course, the whole story was bogus. After weeks of the media harming on it, the truth came out that (as I recall) 6 pieces were unaccounted for out of 30,000+ and the Oil Ministry was not guarded but the museum was.
bq. So if Bush gets the blame for that, why has he not gotten credit for this....
Paul then links to this story in
The Chronicle:
bq.
Kabul museum treasures emerge from hiding places
22,000 pieces of gold, bronze and ivory were saved by curators
More than 22,000 treasures from the Kabul Museum in Afghanistan, long thought to have been lost in the war against the Soviet Union and the subsequent cultural purge by the Taliban, have been located in bank vaults and other safe places where they were hidden by museum officials.
bq. The priceless Bactrian gold collection, precious ivories, bronze statues and other artifacts of 5,000 years of history on the Orient's Silk Road — virtually all of the museum's most precious items — were preserved despite the devastation engulfing the country, archaeologists said last week.
bq. The discovery of the Bactrian gold was announced this summer, but a just-completed inventory revealed that virtually all of the museum's most precious items are intact, said Oxford University archaeologist Fredrik T. Hiebert.
Very cool!
Posted by DaveH at November 23, 2004 9:24 PM