A critical food run has just been completed for the surviving animals in the Baghdad Zoo.  According to my way of thinking, those animals are much more valuable than the plundered and lost antiquities of the Baghdad Musuem.  What way of thinking is that?  The belief that life is more sacred than life's artifacts.  Of course, only the big cats, for the most part, were left untouched in the zoo.  Why was that?  Hrmmm.  *ponders*  What, nobody wanted to pet the starving tigers?

Well, at least some of the antiquities are in good hands.  As you can see, one of my buddies is diligently guarding a priceless portrait of Saldin in the back of a covered pickup while shaking down a bottle of pills that he's about to wash down with that beer in his lap.

So was guardianship of antiquities in the Baghdad Musuem mishandled?  All I can say is that I'm damned glad no Marines got killed defending dusty artifacts and I am equally glad that no Marine ended up shooting a 10-year old kid running away from the musuem with a necklace or a piece of pottery.  Believe me, the U.S. may take some heat for not factoring 'sufficient protection' for the antiquities. But if they had lost troops defending ancient urns, or, more likely, taken lives in the defense of the same, the outrage would have known no end.