And maybe those reports are true, and maybe they aren't. And maybe there were two rival spin doctors involved, one of them looking for a picture for the US public, and one more concerned about the people in the street, and watching from the non-US world.

I see from The Independent today that it is believed that the Ananna Vase, which Peter T was especially worried about, was stolen to order. Which at least means that it has a chance of having survived intact.

But for the shattered clay tablets with their writing, and the manuscripts and books burnt in the National Library, there is no hope.

Paradoxically, the fact that the invaders made great play about avoiding targetting these buildings, and did not do target them, probably made things worse. It meant that national treasures and archives and that were not removed to a safer place, as normally happens in wartime.

There was in fact a lot of concern expressed in advance, by academics and others around the world, about the possibility of damage to heritage sites. However the idea that the national museum and library would be left completely unguarded by the people responsible for security in the city - that doesn't seem to have been something that anybody thought necessary to warn against.