>>This is the cradle of western civilization. To try to trivialize the losses is shameful. <<

I'll tell you what's shameful. It was an inside job. The Times, (UK) May 11:

Fifty museum employees staged a protest in which they waved placards under the noses of American investigators proclaiming that Jabir Khalil, chairman of the Iraqi state board of heritage and antiquities, was a “dictator” and a “thief”. . . .

The investigators, too, have expressed suspicions that the plunder was facilitated by museum employees. Objects had vanished from a storage vault outside the museum to which museum officials had access. “It may turn out to be an inside job,” said one investigator. “Whoever did this seemed to know exactly what they were looking for.”

This, from Tom's article:

However, we can make several findings, based on what we know now. The first- and second-level storage rooms were looted but show no signs of entry on their -- forced -- on their shared exterior doors. And you see those doors before you. Either the door -- neither the door leading from the museum floor to the storage area nor the door leading from the storage area to the back alleyway were forced or showed any signs of forced opening. The keys to these doors were last seen in the director's safe and are now missing....

First are the 40 exhibits stolen from the public galleries. Here the thieves were clearly selective and discriminate in their choice of artifacts, stealing the most valuable items, while bypassing copies and less valuable items...

Virtually all of the times returned under the amnesty program -- by the way, further indicating the random, indiscriminate nature of this looting in these two storage rooms, virtually all of the items returned under the amnesty program come from these rooms, come from neighborhood residents.

The third category, the third dynamic at play here are the over 10,000 pieces from the basement storage room. It is simply inconceivable that this area was found, breached and entered, or that the unmarked keys were found by anyone who did not have an intimate, insider's knowledge of the museum and its storage practices in general, and of that corner of the basement and the contents of those specific, unmarked, nondescript cabinets in particular.

The same thugs who looted Iraq for twenty years looted it one more time. The local residents were honest enough to return the stuff they stole in the frenzy of Baghdad's fall. But certain Baathist museum employees took the most valuable pieces.

What we have here is a picture of American forces attempting to make Iraq whole again. You're right to say that we shouldn't trivialize the losses. But we ought to remember who, exactly, is responsible.