Tuesday, November 23, 2004

President Bush saved thousands of museum pieces in Afghanistan

Paul on Wizbang makes a really good point here:

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.

The media even reported many times that the Oil Ministry was guarded but the Museum was not, outraging the Bush haters.

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.

So if Bush gets the blame for that, why has he not gotten credit for this....

Kabul museum treasures emerge from hiding places

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.

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.

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.

...

...

It is no exaggeration to say the removal of the Taliban saved these antiquities. So, following the media's footsteps, I credit George Bush.


Couldn't have put it better myself.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home


Web Pages referring to this page
Link to this page and get a link back!