Bahrani on the Looting in Iraq

The pattern of destruction [at the Iraq National Museum] made it immediately clear to me that this was not a case of random desecration by an oppressed population taking revenge on a hated regime. Instead, the localized mutilization left no doubt that the looting of the museum involved a faction of professional antiquities thieves who knew exactly what kinds of objects to take, where to find them in the museum, and which ones would fetch the highest prices.

Zainab Bahrani. 2004. Lawless in Mesopotamia. Natural History 113(2):44-49