Lest we forget, Jay Garner’s office asked CENTCOM to guard that museum in Baghdad:
KUWAIT CITY — In a memo sent two weeks before the fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon office charged with rebuilding Iraq urged top commanders of U.S. ground forces to protect the Iraqi National Museum and other cultural sites from looters.
“Coalition forces must secure these facilities in order to prevent looting and the resulting irreparable loss of cultural treasures,” says the March 26 memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.
The Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), led by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, sent the five-page memo to senior commanders at the Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC).
Two weeks later, American forces pulled down the giant statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad to cheering crowds, and in the days that followed, looters pillaged Baghdad.
The museum was No. 2 on a list of 16 sites that ORHA deemed crucial to protect. Financial institutions topped the list, including the Iraqi Central Bank, which is now a burned-out shell filled with twisted metal beams from the collapse of the roof and all nine floors under it.
“We asked for just a few soldiers at each building, or if they feared snipers, then just one or two tanks,” said an angry ORHA official, one of several who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity.
So the question is why CENTCOM didn’t cooperate with ORHA, not why America doesn’t love clay pots, because we clearly do. I don’t expect this memo is going to quiet any of the critics of the Administration, but their official spokesman is off on an anti-Chalabi tirade now and can’t be bothered with any of this factual stuff.