So who’s buying those antiquities?
: As I drove home tonight listening to the BBC World Service on the radio, someone from the British Museum said that some of the antiquities stolen from the looted museums of Baghdad are already showing up… where?… in Paris. He said Paris is the headquarters of this trade. He also made clear that much of what is being portrayed as mob looting is, instead, an organized theft ring with a market.
So the fault for the looting of the museums rests in great measure in the laps of those who are criticizing us for not stopping it: with the French.
If the French had agreed to join in the war, perhaps they could have guarded the museums. But we were busy. We were protecting people.
Maybe we didn’t stop the looting of the museums.
But we also didn’t cause it.
Did the European antique trade? Did the French?
