[link|http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=85753|Not on our watch]

Excerpt:

Taken together, Iraqi archaeologists say, the evidence convinces them that the very people entrusted with protecting some of history's most significant relics are responsible for some of the worst plundering of ancient artefacts.

Thieves left a long trail, with many twists and turns, which runs back at least to 1991, when Saddam's defeat in the Gulf War reduced Iraq's antiquities to booty for his cronies to steal, the archaeologists charge.

"The gang started in the early 1990s, with the support of Saddam Hussain himself," said Junayd Fakhri, an archaeologist who claims the 1990 discovery of a royal Assyrian treasure buried in a palace well, perhaps in 8th century B.C.

Priceless relics of gold and ivory were uncovered with about 400 skeletons, one shackled in irons at the wrists and ankles, Fakhri said. He thinks it was an Assyrian king executed and buried with his retinue at Nimrud, 20 miles southeast of Mosul.

It was an extraordinary find, and a controversial theory, one that international experts would normally study in great detail, examining the bones and the jewellery and vigorously debating their meaning.

But Fakhri and several other Iraqi experts say Saddam's culture and information minister during the 1980s and early '90s, Latif Nusayyif Jasim, ordered about 160 pounds of Nimrud's golden treasures, including a queen's crown and jewellery, shipped to Baghdad.

The treasure was stored in a vault at the national bank, which was looted along with the national museum in the early hours after Saddam's fall.

"They can say the museum was looted and nobody knows the truth," Fakhri said. "The truth is they sold all the pieces."

I say:

One less thing for the America blamers to shed crocodile tears over. Go back to crying real tears into your beer.