Kill looters, urges archaeologist

[kayell]

Ugh, now this is a woman in need of a firing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,994460,00.html

An American archaeologist yesterday urged her compatriots to kill the looters who are pillaging archaeological sites in Iraq.

"I would like to see some helicopters flying over these sites, and some bullets fired at the looters," Elizabeth Stone, head of archaeology at Stony Brook University in New York, said in London yesterday. "I think you have got to kill some people to stop this."

Professor Stone, who directed major excavations in Iraq in the 1980s, is a speaker at an international conference on the archaeology of the region, being held this week at the British Museum.


more

[Mairead]

1. I hope it's only that the destruction has made her lose her grip a bit

I doubt the looters are bad people in the ordinary way of things. Stealing artifacts to sell is not at anywhere near the same level of depravity as killing or maiming people.

The idea of shooting the looters I'm sure appeals on an atavistic level, but let's hope it's only her anguish speaking.

[nuxvomica]

2. In Prof. Stone's defense, she does talk about armed gangs of looters.

So she's probably in the mindset that the situation is pretty desperate and dangerous for the archaeologists. But that was a very unfortunate way to put it.

[Francis]

3. Ther is something to be said

about this
You have a population that is used to terror as control, now that has gone and there is nothing in it's place anarchy prevails

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. And so much human history is placed in that region

That, much as I don't particularly care for death penalty or war, I'm of a mind to say "Yeah, these sites need to be protected; they're value to humanity exceeds the value of the looters' lives".

Though I should prefer that, simply, we station troops or police or something else to watch the sites so that looters can't even get close enough that they'd need to be killed.

It's awfully rare for me to put "things" above people, but perhaps in this case?

[The Stranger]

5. I'd say that the Neanderthal Republicans and their Chimpanzee leader

lack the cranial capacity to see the value of these sites that are far more advanced than their bizarre level, such as it is, of civilization -- except that I would be insulting Neanderthals and Chimpanzees.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. As part of the Neanderthal and Chimpanzee Anti-Defamation League

I have issues with that post. :-)

Yes, they (repukes and those who follow them) are too stupid to care about them. And also, by destroying them, they (the repuke leaders)ensure that their version of "history" and "religion" won't have any nasty FACTS popping up showing them to be liars and idiots, so they can continue to safely revise and rewrite history to meet their current idealogical agenda of world domination through a bastardized and utterly false form of Totalitarian Christianity.

Bastards.

[ZenLefty]

7. Duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3977&mesg_id=3977&listing_type=search