Word: iraq
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While drone warfare is controversial when it surreptitiously operates over Pakistani territory, there is no secrecy about its use to spot trouble ahead of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan itself. One system perfected in Iraq is headed for Central Asia. Task Force ODIN (short for Observe, Detect, Identify and Neutralize) is reputed to have killed 3,000 alleged bomb-planters and led to the capture of several hundred more...
...extraordinary first step. The Iraq museum is home to the single finest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities the world has ever seen: The Vase of Warka, the first naturalist depiction of human life in stone; The Mask of Warka, the first naturalist depiction of the human face; The Bassetki statue, the first known lost-wax method of copper casting. On and on and on. Every step you take in the Iraq museum, you get to say "the first." If there were truly a cradle of civilization, you can't get closer to it than the Iraq museum. Its opening proclaims...
...tanks rolled into Iraq in March, 2003, Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos and his counterterrorism team followed right behind. Tasked with investigating battle-related criminal activity, the team was soon redirected to Iraq's National Museum when news broke that priceless artifacts were being looted. They camped out in the museum for the remainder of his tour of duty, tallying the artifacts stolen and hunting down the thieves. It was, perhaps, serendipity or kismet, that Bogdanos, who holds advanced degrees in law and classics from Columbia University, would be present to take on the task of recovering some of the world...
...lived in the museum for my entire first tour in Iraq in 2003. What it took to get from there - a devastated, closed, sealed-shut museum that had been looted by neighborhood residents, government officials and some museum staff members - to today where it's able to open a couple of galleries for a couple of hours relied almost exclusively on the extraordinary heroism, conscientiousness and integrity of the Iraqi people. From April of 2003 until November 2003 - the last time I physically hand-counted the items - almost 2000 different antiquities stolen from the museum were returned to the museum...
...that argument, but it's a fair one. The ministry of tourism and antiquities, on the other hand, shares my belief, which is: open it today, one gallery for one hour. And tomorrow it's one gallery for two hours. And on and on. And you enable all of Iraq to take ownership of their museum and you enable, you force the world to sit up and take notice. Iraq is more than just bombs and war. It's about history...