OIL MINISTRY NOT GUARDED?

An embedded reporter denies that the Ministry of Oil was protected by American troops while looting went on elsewhere.

"Bad Reporting in Baghdad" (The Weekly Standard)
From the May 12, 2002 issue: You have no idea how well things are going.
by Jonathan Foreman
05/12/2003, Volume 008, Issue 34

[...]

More irritating is the myth constantly repeated by antiwar columnists that the military let the city be destroyed--in particular the hospitals and the national museum--while guarding the Ministry of Oil. The museum looting is turning out to have been grotesquely exaggerated. And there is no evidence for the ministry of oil story. Depending on the article, the Marines had either a tank or a machine gun nest outside the ministry. Look for a photo of that tank or that machine gun nest and you'll look in vain. And even if the Marines had briefly guarded the oil ministry it would have been by accident: The Marines defended only the streets around their own headquarters and so-called Areas of Operation. Again, though, given the pro-regime sources favored by so many of the press corps huddled in the Palestine Hotel, it's not surprising that this rumor became gospel.

[...]

Jonathan Foreman is a correspondent for the New York Post, embedded with the Scout Platoon of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad.

UPDATE (7 May): Andras Reidlmayer has a post to the IraqCrisis list which collects photographs and evidence that the Oil Ministry was hit by a U.S. airstrike and then looted on 9 April but occupied from that afternoon on by U.S. Marines. There was at least one tank there sometime before Baghdad fell.

Sat Apr 12, 2:50 AM ET

US soldiers take up positions outside the burning Oil Ministry in Baghdad before the city fell to coalition forces(AFP/File/Ramzi Haidar )