“Thieves of Baghdad,” the book U.S. Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos wrote about the thefts from the Iraq National Museum, is about to be made into a movie.
If the script is any indication, the film by Valhalla Motion Pictures and Legendary Pictures should be a most unusual mystery story. The more the detective investigates, the less he finds of the reported looting of the museum.
Finally, he discovers the real crime.
Act 1: “April 14, 2003.” Five days after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Robert Siegel at National Public Radio’s studio reports on looting at the Baghdad museum. Into a gold-plated NPR microphone, Siegel, played by Ben Affleck, declares:
“As it turned out, American troops were but a few hundred yards away as the country’s heritage was stripped bare.”
Then, behind another golden microphone, a Pacifica Network reporter announces:
“Over 170,000 ancient artifacts have been destroyed or stolen from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad.”
The scene switches to The New York Times printing press, pumping out papers. A tight shot highlights one sentence on Page 1:
“The National Museum of Iraq … was looted on Thursday and Friday with the loss of almost all of its store of 170,000 artifacts.”
Act 2: “One Week Later.” Colonel Bogdanos, played by Tom Cruise, appears in Baghdad, where he is told the museum has been emptied of all 501,000 of its archaeological artifacts, cataloged under 170,000 lot numbers, about three items per lot.
Act 3: “The Inventory.” Bogdanos discovers that 95 percent of the artifacts never left the museum. Almost everything is fine. The mystery is, how come every newspaper and news network in the world said -- and still says -- close to 100 percent of these precious treasures were taken, when 95 percent of the items were always in place?
Act 4: “The Secret Place.” Bogdanos discovers 2 percent more of the pieces had been stored in a bank vault and elsewhere for safekeeping. That’s 97 percent preserved. The mystery is, how did every museum worker forget to mention this earlier in the month?
Act 5: “The Inside Job.” Bogdanos discovers 2 percent more of the artifacts had been stolen. But a key on the store room floor and the pattern of missing items (“The good stuff is gone. The cheap stuff was skipped without a look.”) reveal that these thefts weren’t by outside looters. This was an “inside job,” probably by museum workers using that key before U.S. troops arrived. That’s 99 percent not looted.
“I see why these museum workers weren’t giving us the facts earlier,” Tom Cruise tells sidekick Dustin Hoffman. “They’re covering up for one another. Donny George is the museum director. Why didn’t he tell me the truth?”
“Donny George sucks,” Hoffman says.
Act 6: “The Single Backpack.” Using elementary powers of deduction, Bogdanos concludes that only 1 percent of the museum’s 501,000 artifacts had been looted, and most of those 5,000 looted pieces -- amulets, beads and imprinting seals -- were so tiny they could have been removed together in one large backpack.
Act 7: “Sept. 10, 2003.” Bogdanos holds a press conference to reveal the total falsehood of all those early stories about U.S. troops allowing looters to remove nearly 100 percent of the Iraq museum’s artifacts.
“Only 1 percent was looted,” Bogdanos says.
Shot of press corps, pens down, yawning.
Act 8: “The Great Wall.” Camera tilts upward on The New York Times building. In the next shot, Gary Oldman, playing Publisher Arthur Ochs-Sulzberger Jr., laughs maniacally before the Times board of directors:
“Ha ha ha ha ha! The Iraqis believed us then when we said American GIs just stood by, allowing everything in the Iraq National Museum to be looted. God, how our false reports infuriated them.
“Iraqis who might have welcomed the Americans, Iraqis who might have joined in the liberation, probably killed Americans instead, thanks to the rage we generated in that long-running story.
“Maybe we should set the record straight. Maybe we should apologize.”
Silence.
“Ha ha ha ha ha!”
The room fills with an echoing laughter.
The camera pans the board room wall, capturing a pantheon of portraits: Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho, Pol Pot, this Kim, that Kim, Saddam, Chomsky.
More laughing.
“The End.”
Frank Warner
Seriously, the Press works by its own internal logic based largely on what sells. The Pinch may be biased, but he's not evil. He thinks he's doing the right thing at NYT, and for the most part it's a good paper. Chomsky may be wrong about nearly everything, may even be deceitful, but he doesn't belong on any list with Stalin and Mao.
Vindictive hyperbole is usually a feature of the extreme political activists. We really shouldn't fall into that pattern of thinking.
Posted by: jj mollo | June 24, 2008 at 02:50 PM
It's only a movie.
But except for the casting, everything before "The Great Wall" is true. And there has been no apology from the publisher.
Posted by: Frank Warner | June 25, 2008 at 12:07 AM