It's symbolic of the Bush ethos - all that mattered was money, instant gratification, safeguard the oil...

Whilst the museums were ransacked and Mesopotamian treasures stolen, lost or smashed - relics gone for ever - history plundered and destroyed.

No planning for after the invasion.
No protection of water, electricity, food, safety, communication...
And none at all for cherished memories of past civilisations.

Says it all really. Civilisation is not only no longer important; it no longer exists.

Tragic.

I'm not too sure that some events like the looting of Iraq's treasures was unplanned.

The excellent ME journalist Robert Fisk at the time wrote of many strange facts about the "spontaneous" looting of museums. Such as convoys of trucks protected by tanks lining up outside the institutions and teams of workers carefully loading priceless antiquities on the back. A lot less valuable stuff was then left to be picked over by mobs.

Even in war-the winning side has a duty to protect the defeated nation from this behaviour. Naturally there will be chaos but the (illegal) Iraq War was one of such organised chaos that it's easy to believe deliberate actions like looting was always part of the plan ie: it wasn't just about oil-but mainly.

The arch conservative and anti-Iraq invasion US
politician Pat Buchanan has always called Iraq-"the greatest handover of public money into private hands the world has ever seen"