The 2003 Looting of Iraq's National Museum: "Stuff Happens"

On April 1, 2024, Dimitri Lascaris visited the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad. In 2003, as U.S. tanks and troops approached the museum in the criminal invasion of Iraq, museum staff fled for their lives, leaving the museum unprotected. At that point, thieves entered the building and stole a vast, unknown number of precious artifacts. When Donald Rumsfeld, then U.S. Defence Secretary, was asked why U.S. forces did nothing to stop the looting, he replied dismissively "stuff happens".