Mark Steyn on the "looting" of the Iraq National Museum:

The National Museum fell victim not to general looting but to a heist, if not an inside job, for which the general lawlessness provided cover. Am I sorry it happened? Yes, because it has given the naysayers, who were wrong about the millions of dead civilians, humanitarian catastrophe, environmental devastation, regional conflagration, etc., one solitary surviving itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny twig from their petrified forest with which to whack Rumsfeld and Co. The retrospective armchair generals are now complaining the generals didn't devote enough thought to saving armchairs from the early Calcholithic age. It isn't enough for America to kill hardly any civilians or even terribly many enemy combatants or bomb any buildings or unduly disrupt the water or electric supply, it also has to protect Iraq's heritage from Iraqis. ]

That assumption speaks volumes. But it also begs the question: What was this stuff doing in Baghdad in the first place?

He makes a good point, that these relics have nothing more to do with modern Iraq than they do with American Indians. They'd have been safer and more accessible at the British Museum or the Smithsonian. It's now being reported that there are far fewer items missing than we were told in the beginning. Whatever happened to the rest, I hope some ordinary Iraqi made some money on them.