Remember what a great chuckle we all had (if be “we” you mean “smug but factually challenged war supporters”), about the “33 missing pieces” from the Iraqi museum?
Well, gosh:
Looters smashed many artifacts, making it difficult for the 44 staffers at the Baghdad museum to reassemble them and determine what has been stolen and what is damaged, said Nawal al-Mutawalli, director of Iraq’s museums.
She said the list of items missing from storage rooms of Baghdad’s museum alone now stands at 13,000. In addition, 47,000 pieces are missing from the museum’s exhibition hall, several of them major masterpieces.
Staffers had so far only checked half the items in the storage rooms. “We expect the number of missing items to rise,” al-Mutawalli said.
Seriously, and all snarkiness aside: this is a matter of basic integrity. Anybody who pushed the “only 33” story really, honestly needs to come back and update it and say, shucks, I guess I got that one a little wrong — if they want to have even a smidgen of credibility ever again. (And this includes you, Howard.)
Not that I’m holding my breath.
(Update: I think the 47,000 is a typo, other articles on this topic report 13,000 missing from the storeroom and 47 missing from the main hall. Still a lot more than 33.)