perfidy

Mickey Kaus has some insight, and a leaked memo, about the Iraqi National Museum thingy we've been yammering about. According to the Kaus-linked WaPo article, the museum was apparently #2 on the list of sites for the military to protect during and after the fighting-- the currently-intact Iraqi Oil Ministry was dead last on the list. Kaus:

I don't see why it gets the U.S. off the hook if the looting was an "inside job." You can protect against inside jobs too, by preventing things from leaving the building -- like priceless statues that take ten men to lift. The issue isn't who did the stealing, but whether or not we screwed up and failed to do what we could. To the extent that our forces were taking fire from the museum and unable to safely protect it, we obviously didn't screw up. To the extent our forces didn't even know for several days that there was a museum there to protect (but did know there was a bank), or to the extent they decided to protect water storage facilities and other infrastructure rather than art work, it was a screw-up. Islamic terrorists twenty years from now won't be wooing recruits with the story of how the evil Americans smashed a water storage facility. They will be telling them about how the Americans burned ancient copies of the Koran and destroyed the heritage of the Arab world. ...

Damn straight. Of course, choosing between defending drinking water for civilians and defending priceless art is a Hobson's choice, but once again, that's only part of an explanation, and not any kind of excuse. 

Kaus also has some thought-provoking stuff about winning the war/losing the peace. Me likey!