File this under "Get out there and tell them we're doing something": following the damning front-page New York Times story of a few weeks ago pointing out that his government has funded only 100 or so of the many thousands of antiquities police needed and that as a result site looting is surging, Iraq's Tourism and Antiquities Minister
announces that more than 36,000 ancient artifacts have been recovered since 2003. Radio Free Europe's crack reporter apparently failed to ask how many of these were recovered in-country (the figure seems to refer only to artifacts returned by other countries), or whether the rate of seizures abroad has increased or decreased recently, or what the Iraqi response is to the Times story, or whether the government there has any plans to fund more antiquities police.
