Posted by Sadie from ? (160.129.204.42) on Sunday, April 13, 2003 at 6:57PM :
In Reply to: I agree 95% [taken from COL] posted by Jeff from d53-152-230.try.wideopenwest.com (64.53.230.152) on Sunday, April 13, 2003 at 3:12PM :
If it hadn't been for the many wars, the years of sanctions, people wouldn't be so damned desperate. I can't blame them. If I thought someone in my family could benefit from the extra money, I'd probably be selling off things I could plunder. It's not like they're going to go out & buy a mercedes with that money, either - they will probably buy a week's worth of food with it.
The real criminals are the guys who made these people so desperate for money. We, the ones who live outside Iraq, WE are the ones living in luxury who can AFFORD to worry about artifacts. Our heritage, not the artifacts, lives INSIDE us.
In a few years, these artifacts will have homes, they will be tracked down & located. The way we get these things back in our homeland is not by punishing the desperate, but by establishing a more solid system of international law & punishment. It should be against international law that artifacts leave the confines of the country in which they were found. Did you know that already the majority of Iraqi artifacts were in Western museums? That Iraqi museums housed mostly reproductions? The real things that are being sold on the streets are only the things that were discovered since the last Gulf War. There is still a wealth of sites yet to explore in Iraq.
Anyway, some day we will establish a committee, an effective one that is, that will be responsible for getting our artifacts back in our homeland & then tagging them all with GPS chips that will be impossible to remove. Until then, be patient with the desperate. They are only doing this because they have very few other means to live right now.
-- Sadie
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