Accusations At Baghdad Museum

Americans checking out Baghdad’s Museum of Antiquities have suggested that museum staff might have participated in stealing from the museum. And that the museum leadership’s membership in the Baathist Party might disqualify them from helping to rebuild the museum. But “for the foreign archaeologists who now throng the museum, the idea that their colleagues could have colluded in its desecration is too appalling to contemplate. They tend to take a relaxed view of the Baathist credentials of [museum director Donny] George and the head of the antiquities board, Jabir Khalil Ibrahim; no one in a senior position, they say, was unqualified.”