The blurb for Sullivan’s “Liberal Idiocy of the Week” column over at Salon (you can go find it yourself if you’re interested) reads:
It was originally reported that 170,000 priceless artifacts were looted from Iraq’s national museum. That number now stands at 33. Will overeager Bush critics issue corrections?
So. Let’s put on our thinking caps. Is there anything else, anything perhaps slightly more important, which turns out to have been not quite as initially reported? Such as, say, the WMD’s which were the justification for the entire war?
Why anyone continues to take Sullivan seriously is beyond my comprehension as a simple uneducated cartoonist. But it’s no wonder he keeps harping on this one — misdirection is everything. Consider two points: (1) the museum may have been the only goddamned site in Iraq which wasn’t looted down to the bare walls, and (2) that was only due to the foresight of the museum officials. If you will forgive me the indulgence of quoting one of my own previous posts:
The fact that the museum’s curators managed to hide the majority of the museum’s treasures in advance does not make the US indifference to that museum’s looting any more ethically palatable. If a police officer stands by and watches a mugger shoot a victim and does nothing to stop it, he’s still guilty of negligence even if the victim lives because he happened to be wearing a bulletproof vest.