U.S. Taps Private
Sector to Rescue Iraqi
Cultural Institutions
The Pentagon fast-tracked award of a cost-plus “relic rescue and recovery” contract valued at $87 million dollars to a little-known private company in President Bush’s home state of Texas, Countywide Resource Management. Secretary Rumsfeld explained that the urgency of the need did not permit an elaborate tendering process open to foreign companies, museums, or NGOs such as UNESCO that are traditionally involved in the preservation of cultural heritage.
Rumsfeld scoffed at the “outdated notion” that restoring the museum to its former glory would require years of intense effort and the full participation of the international antiquities community. “People will be amazed at what an efficient, incentivized private contractor can accomplish,” he affirmed.
The first shipment of artifacts “equivalent in antiquity and significance” to what was plundered from the Iraq National Museum arrived at Baghdad International Airport aboard a C-130 transport yesterday. Recovered from an archaeological dig at a landfill in Plano, Texas, the items include “partial galvanized can with inscription ‘Campb… Tomo(?)… Soup’, construction boot missing heel (left),” and a miraculously preserved full head of cabbage, according to the manifest.
According to Marine Colonel Tommy Edwards, who solemnly escorted the relics to a hurriedly-prepared wing of the National Museum, “Iraqis can now begin to enjoy their new cultural heritage of freedom and liberty”.
Joking that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, Edwards asked the Iraqi people to be patient while the painstaking work of excavation, cataloging, and crating continued in Texas. “It may be many weeks before the museum is fully stocked”.
Even so, the achievements to date are impressive. Iraqi art historians and administrators were moved to tears as they viewed plans for the Halliburton Hall of Pots and toured the tasteful and well-appointed gift shop, already in operation.
First Lady Laura Bush, herself a former librarian, has urged Americans to scour their bookshelves and attics for vintage books of suitable subject matter “and old Bibles, but not too worn” to send to Baghdad as replacements for the thousands of volumes lost during the destruction of the National Library.
President Bush, responding to reports that looters with shopping carts were pre-positioning themselves outside the Syrian Museum of Antiquities in Damascus in anticipation of a U.S. invasion, assured the Syrian people that “American civilization will prove itself equal to any cultural shortcoming” that may arise in that Middle Eastern country.
