Kaylan Continues to Try to Rewrite History, Now Smearing Bogdanos as Well as Curtis and Stone

Melik Kaylan's attempt to rewrite history continues, now with increased desperation including a smear of Matthew Bogdanos. I've posted a comment on the Forbes site, which I append here:

Col. Bogdanos is certainly inconvenient for Kaylan's story. A Marine war-hero and Republican who is a prosecutor in NYC when not on anti-terrorism missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, he hardly fits the anti-American, anti-military mold, yet he concluded that approximately 15,000 artifacts were looted in April 2003. 5,000 or so of these were cylinder seals, the best of which (that is, the kind that would go to the museum) sell for over $100,000 apiece; that is an inconvenient truth that would explain why looters would target the museum and thousands of archaeological sites. Kaylan therefore chooses, shamefully, to smear him as self-serving, ignoring that Bogdanos has donated to charity the profits from his book (for which he received the National Humanities Medal from George W. Bush). Kaylan also chooses to ignore reports by the Italian carabinieri and Polish forces that describe ongoing looting in the 2003-4 period, and ignores as well the evidence from satellite photos proving a massive surge in site looting began just before the war when Saddam moved his troops away from archaeological sites to the front lines. All this information, and much more, I shared with Kaylan when he contacted me in July 2008 while he was preparing his first story. For him to claim now that he got no help from the archaeological community is... well, I leave it to readers of Forbes to decide what it is. Professor Lawrence Rothfield University of Chicago

Rereading this I realize I forgot to also defend the honor of Donny George, also smeared.