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You are here: Home / Politics / domestic terrorists / A Setback For Hobby Lobby’s Bible Museum

A Setback For Hobby Lobby’s Bible Museum

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Hobby Lobby today agreed to forfeit thousands (yes, thousands) of cuneiform tablets and clay seals (bullae), along with 144 cylinder seals and $3 million dollars to the United States Government in a civil suit. The artifacts most likely were looted from Iraq and smuggled into the US as “tile samples” via the UAE. Removing artifacts from archaelogical sites removes them from their historical context and makes them largely unusable for understanding the past. The money from their sales often goes to organizations like ISIS.

According to the complaint and stipulated statement of facts filed with the court, in or around 2009, Hobby Lobby began to assemble a collection of historically significant manuscripts, antiquities and other cultural materials. In connection with this effort, Hobby Lobby’s president and a consultant traveled to the UAE in July 2010 to inspect a large number of cuneiform tablets and other antiquities being offered for sale (the “Artifacts”). Cuneiform is an ancient system of writing on clay tablets that was used in ancient Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.

In October 2010, an expert on cultural property law retained by Hobby Lobby warned the company that the acquisition of cultural property likely from Iraq, including cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, carries a risk that such objects may have been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq. The expert also advised Hobby Lobby to review its collection of antiquities for any objects of Iraqi origin and to verify that their country of origin was properly declared at the time of importation into the United States. The expert warned Hobby Lobby that an improper declaration of country of origin for cultural property could lead to seizure and forfeiture of the artifacts by CBP.

Notwithstanding these warnings, in December 2010, Hobby Lobby executed an agreement to purchase over 5,500 Artifacts, comprised of cuneiform tablets and bricks, clay bullae and cylinder seals, for $1.6 million. The acquisition of the Artifacts was fraught with red flags. For example, Hobby Lobby received conflicting information where the Artifacts had been stored prior to the inspection in the UAE. Further, when the Artifacts were presented for inspection to Hobby Lobby’s president and consultant in July 2010, they were displayed informally. In addition, Hobby Lobby representatives had not met or communicated with the dealer who purportedly owned the Artifacts, nor did they pay him for the Artifacts. Rather, following instructions from another dealer, Hobby Lobby wired payment for the Artifacts to seven personal bank accounts held in the names of other individuals.

Hobby Lobby’s religion is so strong, though, that they can’t pay for insurance that would allow women to have contraceptives.

 

Reader Interactions

113Comments

  3. 3.

    Mnemosyne

    It’s okay to steal as long as you’re stealing artifacts from heretics. I’m sure it’s in the Bible somewhere.

    G is slightly more plugged into this stuff than I am since he’s working on his MLIS, so now I understand what he was ranting about over the weekend.

  4. 4.

    Roger Moore

    I’m disappointed there hasn’t been a criminal case associated as well. People really deserve to go to prison not just for the looting but because they were obviously making a deliberate attempt to deceive Customs. It’s disgusting that the rich and well-connected can weasel out of serious consequences for that kind of thing.

  5. 5.

    Karen in SoCal

    I hate these fucking people and will NEVER step foot into one of their stores.

  6. 6.

    debbie

    In executing the stipulation of settlement, Hobby Lobby has accepted responsibility for its past conduct and agreed to take steps to remedy the deficiencies that resulted in its unlawful importation of the Artifacts.

    I hope flagellation and hair shirts are included in the remedy.

  7. 7.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    Hobby Lobby’s religion is so strong, though, that they can’t pay for insurance that would allow women to have contraceptives.

    Or respect the rule of law.

    What do any of the artifacts have to do with the Bible anyway? These clay tablets sound like they’re from thousands of years before the alleged birth of Christ. I bet they’d just be window dressing. They look old and authetic. Evangelicals will swallow anything

  9. 9.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Previously on the topic, from The Atlantic:

    It isn’t that the Greens are looking to make illicit or inauthentic acquisitions. “That’s a headache we don’t want,” Steve Green told us before news of the investigation broke last year. But unprovenanced artifacts beget unprovenanced artifacts. Once it is known that buyers are willing to purchase items with dubious or nonexistent provenance, the market for those items expands, which in turn encourages the kind of looting that we’re witnessing today in the Middle East. The connection between a scrap of papyrus and on-the-ground violence may be difficult to see. But it exists. And that is where the real danger of hiding provenance lies. The pace of their acquisition alone suggests that the Greens may not have taken every possible step to investigate the provenance of what they have bought, a risk that they acknowledge. “We do what we can,” Steve Green told us, responding to the question of whether his family has knowingly acquired problematic artifacts. “But there is the risk that after the fact, you find out that it wasn’t appropriate for us to buy it.”

    Uh huh. And marking the packages “ceramic samples, value $37” and sending them to multiple addresses in small quantities wasn’t an attempt to evade scrutiny.

    All the experts were cautious not to make explicit accusations, but they said the same thing over and over again: acquiring that many items at that pace at very least suggested the Greens weren’t asking too many questions about provenance, and were willing both to work with dodgy sellers and create a market for them. ISIS appreciates the money.

  10. 10.

    CZanne

    Of all of the corporate entities I could have cast as L Bob Rife, I never thought it would be the kitsch-mongering, contraceptive-phobic, martyrbating Biblolators. No drugs, no blood transfusions, no looking at raw bitmaps.

    More seriously — their payment scheme looks suspiciously like participating in money laundering. Given their archaic inventory system that’s supposedly purpose built to avoid the Number of the Beast (barcodes and SKUs) but is also pretty damn useful for disguising what’s actually coming in and going out, I’d say it’s time to get some forensic accountants in there.

  12. 12.

    donnah

    I am a consumer of quite a bit of craft materials, but refuse to shop at Hobby Lobby. I despise their business practices and their greedy, hypocritical owner. I would be glad to see him stripped of all the artifacts he has stolen.

  13. 13.

    CZanne

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: They want to get them to sit on them and keep academic people with actual knowledge of the era and language from studying them and publishing about them, because those eggheads will probably say things that aren’t actually in the Bible. It’s the same principle that leads the LDS to buy up historic Mormon documents and lock them away.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Karen in SoCal:

    I hate these fucking people and will NEVER step foot into one of their stores.

    There is a Hobby Lobby within, literally, fairly easy walking distance of where I live. But I’m with you: I will not patronize their horrible Bible-thumping judgmental closed-on-Sundays-because-Lord’s Day stores, ever. I’d much rather drive an additional five miles to the nearest Michael’s, or an additional 10 miles to the nearest Joanne’s, than spend one single penny at HL.

    Fuckem, to quote my good close personal friend EFG.

  17. 17.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, is it just me, or does this sound like the owners are using the corporation as a front to buy illegal artifacts and avoid criminal charges for doing it? Note: IANAL, but the whole setup sounds shady as fuck to me.

  18. 18.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @CZanne: That sounds about right. Glad this blew up in their faces. Now those artifacts can hopefully go back to where they belong.

    It belongs in a museum! /Indy

  20. 20.

    dr. bloor

    The money from their sales often goes to organizations like ISIS.

    I don’t particularly doubt it, but do you have some background reading re: how the $ ends up in ISIL pocketsess?

    Asking for a friend with some infuriating Jeebus-loving relatives.

  21. 21.

    germy

    A few days ago we saw the 1933 Boris Karloff film “The Ghoul” about a man who steals an ancient artifact (“The Eternal Light”). It doesn’t end well for him.

    (Incidentally, this film was thought lost for almost 40s years, until a pristine print was discovered in the 1980s in a room blocked off by some fallen lumber. The quality of the film and sound was amazing for something so old.)

  22. 22.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @CZanne: It sure seems like the right-wing Thing To Do these days: money laundering. I seriously wonder how much this all connects back to Russian oligarchs

  23. 23.

    germy

    @dr. bloor: I remember the American contractor who sold his truck (still had his company logo on the door) and was appalled to see it on the news being used by ISIL. The truck got sold, sold again, and then ended up being used by those assholes.

  24. 24.

    JDM

    Hobby Lobby caught funding ISIS? So what, it’s not like they run a pizza store or something.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    Also, is it just me, or does this sound like the owners are using the corporation as a front to buy illegal artifacts and avoid criminal charges for doing it?

    Which they shouldn’t be able to do. This is a corporation that’s so closely held it’s legally allowed to have its owners religious beliefs. That says to me that it shouldn’t be able to shield them from charges of corporate wrongdoing.

  29. 29.

    Ladyraxterinok

    Hobby Lobby’s headquarters is in OKC, OK.

    A few years ago Oral Roberts University in Tulsa had some financial problems. Some profs sued the school for financial mismanagement. There was quite a long-running scandal. Eventually Hobby Lobby stepped in and paid off the debt (IIRC about $20 million). In return, one member of the family got a seat on the board.

    Of some interest:

    —Michelle Bachmann is a grad of the (now closed) ORU law school

    —David Barton, the TX GOP leader and ‘historian’ who teaches the US is a ‘Christian Nation’ is an ORU grad

    –Ron Luce, founder of Teen Mania, is also an ORU grad. (Some have claimed this is a very problematic orgaization.)

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    Also, is it just me, or does this sound like the owners are using the corporation as a front to buy illegal artifacts and avoid criminal charges for doing it? Note: IANAL, but the whole setup sounds shady as fuck to me.

    No, yeah, I think you’re quite right. This isn’t a new story; I remember reading something about it a couple of years ago. But using the Hobby Lobby corporate identity as a way to launder this plunder, yeah, “shady as fuck” is, I believe, the formal legal term.

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Karen in SoCal: I will. If only to fill 17 carts with various and assorted items that all have to be rung up and then just before I give them payment? I say, “Ooooops, my bad, I can’t afford this.” and walk out.

  32. 32.

    trollhattan

    @Karen in SoCal: @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    I hate these fucking people and will NEVER step foot into one of their stores.

    Amen, sister.

    They showed up in our metroplex a few years back and now take out full-page ads at Christmas, Easter and the like to remind us how godly these dates are. Tuesday ushered an ad advising us how godly the 4th is, which has me scratching my noggin.

  33. 33.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Museum person here. This is big. It isn’t just a slap on the wrist — the Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art voluntarily surrendered looted close to 1,000 Greek/Roman antiquities taken from Italy in 2006, but the Museums weren’t sued (although a curator from the Getty was). After that episode, most museums in the US have kept their noses clean.

    As for the Bible “Museum,” it has other shady practices. It restricts access to researchers; only a selected few who become members of the “Green Scholars Initiative” are allowed to work with the collection. NO ONE else I know of does this. Furthermore, the Initiative is mainly composed of undergraduate and graduate students (why not beyond?) who are affiliated mainly with Christian, evangelical institutions. Researchers are required to sign a non-disclosure form (again, not normal). CF. the Atlantic article for more information.

    Finally, they have been trying to court the DC and Smithsonian Museum Community, asking for tours and meetings and sharing of forms. I was asked to participate in one such event after the Atlantic article came out and declined. I’m not certain about the rest of the Smithsonian community, but I’m not seeing an adherence to the AAM and ICOM Museum code of ethics or standard museum practices.

  34. 34.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @dr. bloor: There’s a bit of back and forth currently on Twitter about whether the money wound up with ISIS.

    The usual route for this sort of thing, though, is that someone in the conflict zones of the Middle East loots archaeological sites and sells the antiquities. The looting is often done on an industrial scale, so the people who have bulldozers and can enlist lots of others can make quite a bit of money. That would likely include ISIS. Lots of wealthy collectors don’t much care where their baubles come from.

    Here’s a story from 2015 about Syrian antiquities in London, from a quick google.

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JDM:

    Hobby Lobby caught funding ISIS? So what, it’s not like they run a pizza store or something.

    Or had an email server in the guest room or something.

  39. 39.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

    Museum person here. This is big. It isn’t just a slap on the wrist — the Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art voluntarily surrendered looted close to 1,000 Greek/Roman antiquities taken from Italy in 2006, but the Museums weren’t sued (although a curator from the Getty was). After that episode, most museums in the US have kept their noses clean.

    Reminds me of how, after the fall of Napoleon, the Louvre had to give back a bunch of objets d’arts, thereby ceding to the Vatican Museum the title of “World’s Greatest Collection of Stolen Art”

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    @Roger Moore: Yeah, corporation are people except for Tuesdays and Thursdays or on days that it’s more advantageous not to be a person. Bastards.

  43. 43.

    ET

    And I doubt they care that a good out went to fund ISIS. Their museum was more important.

  44. 44.

    Anne Laurie

    Some aggregated backstory, from the original newsbreak in 2015. From that Atlantic article:

    …Steve Green has a mantra: We aren’t collectors, we’re storytellers. In his conversation with us, he made it clear that he envisages the Museum of the Bible as a place that will tell the story of a sacred book that has traveled down the centuries essentially unchanged since the time of its composition. Green describes the museum’s mission as “nonsectarian,” and language in the museum’s recent nonprofit filings reinforces that idea. “We exist to invite all people to engage with the Bible,” the most recent filing we were able to obtain reads. “We invite biblical exploration through museum exhibits and scholarly pursuits.” But in its first nonprofit filing, in 2010, the museum made a stronger claim: that its primary exempt purpose was “to bring to life the living word of God, to tell its compelling story of preservation, and to inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible.”…

    “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”

  45. 45.

    WaterGirl

    @Aleta: Tell me again why/how Martha Steward ended up in federal prison and these people get away with no real consequences. Yeah, it’s a lot of money, but if you have 20 million to bail someone out, 3 million is pocket change.

  46. 46.

    Ruckus

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    I was more thinking that we could get jesus freaks to take the bet. Lots of cash, never have to pay off. Or I come out as the elder jesus (I do have a beard! Long hair is long, long, long gone though.) and proclaim them to be heretics and tell them they lost the bet. Hell they’d never know, I am white.

  47. 47.

    chris

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

    I’m not seeing an adherence to the AAM and ICOM Museum code of ethics or standard museum practices.

    These are godly folk, Cheryl, their ethics and practices are much better than yours. /snark

  49. 49.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Anne Laurie:

    sacred book that has traveled down the centuries essentially unchanged since the time of its composition

    Oh HELL no

    /Will Smith

  50. 50.

    Baud

    If Obama’s or Hillary’s DOJ had done this, there would have been three years of hearings in Congress.

  51. 51.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TaMara (HFG): Actually the pharisees were the emerging rabbis. They included Jesus. What you want are the saducees who were the priestly class. As the New Testament was assembled a decision was made to separate Jesus from his context – a Galilean rabbi – and the pharisees replaced the saducees as the intolerant, inflexible religious bad guys.

  53. 53.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Roger Moore: There should be. We are party to the international conventions against this type of thing. That requires criminal prosecution.

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @pseudonymous in nc: The money most likely didn’t go to ISIS. This stuff began to be peddled in 2009, which means it was likely looted prior to that. At that point al Qaeda in Iraq was at one of its low points. More likely it was one of the other extremists movements working in Iraq or even current/former government officials trying to make a buck.

  63. 63.

    MomSense

    Plus hobby lobby sells a lot of fiber that would make god very angry what with all that abominable mixing of materials.

    Leviticus is quite clear on the subject.

  64. 64.

    Ruckus

    @Thoroughly Pizzled:
    I think there might just be one.
    I just sent my reply to my second email from the CA republican party. I replied to the first one as well but was quite a bit less sweary. I jacked it up a bit for the second one. Next time they will need the urban dictionary to understand it. What gets me is that I’m a registered Democrat so they should know that I’m never going to vote for them, that I think their policies are completely fucked up, that their party standards are lower than year old whale shit, and that I despise them with the heat of a nova.
    If I get another email from them we know hell exists. I think the next reply should be rather long, should have far more swear words than non, and what else?

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dr. bloor: Various groups, some extremists, some just everyday Iraqis, looted the various museums shortly after the US invasion. Additionally because of the strategic failure to effectively plan what to do and execute such once combat operations officially ceased meant that Iraq was largely ungoverned from late 2003 onwards. As a result all the archeologists that would normally be working in Iraq fled. This includes the Iraqi ones that could get out. The former head of the State Board of Heritage and Antiquities, a Chaldean Christian, fled and is a professor in the State University of NY system is just one major example. Any attempt to get these folks back in, to catalogue what was missing, to do surveys of sites for comparative purposes, etc, even in 2008 and later when things had settled down, were shot down by the Heritage Officer at US Embassy Baghdad. And that woman was dumb as a stump (and that’s offensive to stumps).

    To make a long story short: both everyday Iraqis and extremists would sell anything they could get their hands on in order to bring in dollars to survive. The former to feed themselves and their families. The latter to fund operations against the Iraqi government and the US led coalition. The Iraqis new where the sites were. The US did not until I got the list, including the geocords, for all known Iraqi heritage sites from the US archeologist who had them. This was in 2008. We populated maps for our brigade, pushed the information up to Division, Corps, and Force commands, and I pushed it across to the Heritage Officer at the Embassy. This was to ensure deconfliction with the coalition for both targeting and for construction. I had to shut down the expansion of a patrol base that would have wiped out a tel, which would have landed a lot of Soldiers in a lot of trouble. I even ran it past the rep from the State Board of Heritage and Antiquity with the Heritage Officer present. He indicated that the State Board had this data and new where everything is. She asked him why they hadn’t told her. He replied: you never asked.

    The Heritage Officer then publicly took credit for getting the information and giving it to the military. So the US archeologist who went out on a professional limb to send me the information got no credit whatsoever. I have subsequently reintroduced the information to SOCOM, CENTCOM, USASOC, ARCENT, the Corps headquarters that are functioning as the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve HQs and the Division headquarters that are the Combined Joint Force Land Component Command HQs as well to ensure that these sites are deconflicted for targeting. And this has to be done on occasion because otherwise people will rotate out and the info will get lost in the shuffle.

  66. 66.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ruckus:

    You’re bearded and white? And you’re hanging out at BJ when you could be grifting the rubes at the local Jesus Cosplay convention?

  67. 67.

    ThresherK

    Coincidentally enough, we watched Monuments Men last night. (I mean watched, on DVD, rather than “left on the channel with the cut-down version on basic cable between commercials”.)

    Is Hobby Lobby acting like the Nazis enough for Godwin?

  69. 69.

    CZanne

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yep, me, too. I’d rather wait 45 days for a slow boat from China direct if Michael’s, Joann, the Indy shops or etsy can’t provide. It will definitely be more ethical, and likely of better quality.

    I’ve hated them for years, but over their labor practices. I had a friend working there. She’s Jewish but kept her faith to herself. She requested the day of Yom Kippur off, just as a day off, didn’t mention why. Got fired two days later for no reason, but it was pretty clear management had looked at a calendar. They stayed *just inside* the at-will employment code. Other women got fired for being visibly pregnant.

    I want that family liquidated and RICO’ed into the sort of abject poverty that requires drop-in shelters and soup kitchens.

  70. 70.

    Ruckus

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    I do have Standards.
    OK one standard. It’s made out of white porcelain, has a seat and a handle that runs water when you need it.

  72. 72.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Mnemosyne:

    does this sound like the owners are using the corporation as a front to buy illegal artifacts and avoid criminal charges for doing it?

    At very least, it sounds like there’s no real separation between the “closely held” corporation, the Greens’ personal possessions, and whatever non-profit entity is used for the Museum Of Old Stuff Sold Out Of The Back Of An Iraqi Land Cruiser.

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The money most likely didn’t go to ISIS.

    In the spirit of the Green family, let’s not be too exacting about provenance here. Or at least, make them prove that their dirty suppliers weren’t buying from ISIS…

  73. 73.

    Jeffro

    @JDM:

    Hobby Lobby caught funding ISIS? So what, it’s not like they run a pizza store or something.

    Wait…do you mean the pizza shop in DC or the one on Mars?

  74. 74.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    You’re bearded and white? And you’re hanging out at BJ when you could be grifting the rubes at the local Jesus Cosplay convention?

    Or playing drums for Fleet Foxes.

    Did anyone else read the ridiculously long article on Josh Tillman a/k/a Father John Misty f/k/a drummer for Fleet Foxes? Fleet Foxes essentially brought him into the band because he had a great hipster beard. And I wasted three years shaving and attending law school.

  78. 78.

    Gvg

    @dr. bloor: it’s almost too simple to explain. ISIS or any other religious fundamentalists invade territory and have no respect for anything of history except things they think are Their special religious things so they loot and destroy anything else that is pagan or heretical or rivals. Sometimes they discover they can sell the objects and at the same time mess with enemies. It goes along with blowing up Budda statues.

  80. 80.

    Ruckus

    @CZanne:
    You know if you think they should be allowed to eat they could get 3 cheese sandwiches on white bread a day in jail. No mayo. Which is a far better place for them than a fair number of people in there now. Someone that wealthy who tried to make money from ripping off our government and an entire country’s heritage should never benefit from any shelter for any reason.

  81. 81.

    randy khan

    @Steve in the ATL:

    @Anne Laurie:

    sacred book that has traveled down the centuries essentially unchanged since the time of its composition

    Oh HELL no

    Yeah, that’s a hoot. I’ve seen whole websites devoted to showing all the different translations, and that’s just in English.

  88. 88.

    Ladyraxterinok

    Kenneth Copeland also attended ORU. Wiki says he entered in 67. (IIRC, the school opened that year; Billy Graham preached at the official opening.) Wiki also states Copeland was Oral’s pilot and chauffer.

    Several of the people Sen Grassley wanted to question about their ministries’ finances have been connected with the school–Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, also Kenneth Copeland.

  91. 91.

    Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire

    @Adam L Silverman: I was under the impression that there is an al Qaeda/ISIS link (according to Wikipedia- I know, I know -ISIS/ISIL was aligned with al Qaeda in Iraq*), so either way, there is still a chance the Greens helped indirectly fund terrorism (or just a hungry Iraqi family), no?

    *Its been quite some time since I’ve had to deal with detainee operations, but I remember there was some confusion over whether al Qaeda was the same group as al Qaeda in Iraq etc, etc. That was in 2006/2007, though. I don’t remember seeing any ISIS/ISIL in the detainee records system, but then again I wasn’t looking for it.

  93. 93.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire: al Qaeda in Iraq was started by the Jordanian expat Zarqawi. He wanted a radical tawheed (unitary understanding of the Deity) rooted movement, affiliated with al Qaeda main, to take the lead on the Sunni extremism side in Iraq. Initially he was rebuffed, repeatedly, because Ayman al Zawahari was thoroughly convinced that Zarqawi was completely outside the lines – even for a violent extremist organization. And Zawahari swayed an uncertain bin Laden on this. Eventually he was brought into the tent, so to speak, until AQI went way beyond what bin Laden and Zawahari were comfortable with. Including Zarqawi claiming the establishment of a caliphate in Iraq and Syria and changing the group’s name to the Islamic State of Iraq and al Shams (the Levant). The current leadership, for the most part, became further radicalized and met each other in Camp Bucca where Task Force 34 (Detainee Operations) was attempting to run a deradicalization program for the inmates. The current group really has little to do with the original group – largely because we killed Zarqawi several years ago. And because they were, at least for a few years, able to do what Zarqawi had not. We now know from recent BBC reporting that ISIL’s shura council is composed of 6 Iraqis, a Jordanian, a couple of Saudis, and an Emirati.

    So you wouldn’t necessarily seen ISIS/ISIL in the records system. You’d have seen al Qaeda in Iraq/AQI, Zarqawi Org, Kitab al Furtan, and several other names for the group and its affiliates. Until Bagdhadi announced the caliphate a few years back, the group only used ISIL as a name for a short period of time while Zarqawi was operating cross border from Syria into Iraq.

  95. 95.

    Steve in the ATL

    @raven: was that picture taken when you just left Chicago?

    (It’s funny because he is originally from Chicago!)

  96. 96.

    Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire

    @Adam L Silverman: See, this is the background info that the worker bees in Task Force 134 (for the building the original detainee ops team worked out of on Camp Victory) didn’t really know (or even learn), mostly because we weren’t focused on that, so thanks. It’s always interesting to find out that history was happening right under your nose!

    And yes, TF 134 tried to work the deradicalization angle, but unfortunately, by 2006/2007, Camp Bucca was so huge that it was almost impossible to do. My husband (the true detainee ops expert) said that if a riot broke out at Bucca, the guards would be hard pressed to stop it or control it- just too high of a detainee:guard ratio.

    I commend Marine Corps General Stone for trying to separate juvenile detainees from adult detainees to help minimize radicalization of youth, but that shit should have happened before 2007.

    Anyway, the Green family sucks.

  97. 97.

    Ruckus

    @The Lodger:
    I’ve always felt it was more of a daily standard. I can see taking a shower once a week if water is an issue (have gone 6 weeks on board a destroyer without a shower. In the Caribbean. In the middle of summer. 300 people working inside mostly at general quarters with the ship closed up. It was….. aromatic. To say the least.) but………..

  98. 98.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire: I know Stone. We were briefed by him and two of his senior folks on our way into country in 2008 at the COIN Academy at Camp Taiji. Then MG Stone and I spoke about the background and deradicalization, he had his XO push me a bunch of data, which I and my teammates used for some analysis, but it was clear he had his work cut out for him, especially as he was in the process of rotating out.

  100. 100.

    DavidTC

    Wait wait wait.

    Why is only ‘Hobby Lobby’ being hit with a fine?

    Haven’t we already legally determined, via the US Supreme Court, that the behavior of Hobby Lobby are actually the behavior of their owners? They had a whole lawsuit so ‘they’ didn’t have to support contraceptives, if I recall correctly, and won.

    If the religiously-motivated behavior of paying for contraceptives would legally be the owners doing it (in violation of their religion beliefs), then surely the religiously-motivated purchasing of ancient artifacts is also their owners doing it.

    I’m not saying they’ve lost all limited liability, but Hobby Lobby literally just argued, in court, that their owner’s religion and Hobby Lobby’s religion were legally the same, which means if Hobby Lobby does something illegal because of ‘their’ religion, surely the owners should be blamed also.

    It is, at minimum, a conspiracy.

  101. 101.

    frosty

    @raven: Nice! But I’m envious! By the time the beard came in that well the hair was already falling out.

  102. 102.

    No One You Know

    @Ruckus: I’m sending my second survey reply to the DNC, and I’m livid about the unmitigated gall of these people asking for money while they plant stories about why Clinton, Pelosi, et al, should just give up and go away.

    Getting so very tired of misogyny. How long have we been protesting this now?

  103. 103.

    Ruckus

    @No One You Know:
    I’d say any woman alive should have been protesting their entire lives but misogyny seems to not be limited to males. Hate is one of the built in emotions all humans come with so that might explain some of it. Some learn that hate has limits, just like all the rest of the emotions, otherwise it can ruin your life, others take it upon themselves to try to prove that it doesn’t and can’t.
    Most of the people requesting money from democratic sources that I get have woman’s names on them including Nancy. None of them has been about the women going away but then you did say plant stories. Got any sources?

  104. 104.

    Ruckus

    FYWP
    Just ate a reply and it’s too late for me to think of what I said and write it again.

  108. 108.

    lowtechcyclist

    Looks to me like Hobby Lobby’s faith was so strong, they broke three of the Ten Commandments.

    “Thou shalt not covet” – they coveted these objects that weren’t theirs, and that they had no right to acquire.

    “Thou shalt not steal – they purchased these objects, knowing that the seller almost surely didn’t have the right to sell them, so they were participating in a theft.

    And of course, the commandment that evangelicals routinely ignore:

    “Thou shalt not bear false witness” – “tile samples,” indeed.

  111. 111.

    Chris

    The money from their sales often goes to organizations like ISIS.

    “I misjudged you, Walter. I knew you would sell your mother for an Etruscan vase. But I didn’t know you would sell your country and your soul, to the slime of humanity.”

  112. 112.

    Chris

    @Adam L Silverman:

    @Roger Moore: There should be. We are party to the international conventions against this type of thing. That requires criminal prosecution.

    Chiquita, HSBC, and God knows how many other corporate entities have been caught financing or laundering money for terrorists and got off with a slap on the wrist, if anything at all, and most of those entities didn’t even pretend to be Righteously Christian. I sure as hell wouldn’t have expected anything more serious here. Though God knows there should’ve been.

  113. 113.

    Chris

    @Adam L Silverman:

    To make a long story short: both everyday Iraqis and extremists would sell anything they could get their hands on in order to bring in dollars to survive.

    Yeah, as much as artifact looting is a pet peeve of mine, I can’t say I don’t sympathize with a lot of the people guilty. It’s hard for me to blame some regular Iraqi dude for selling whatever he could to make as much money as he could for his own safety – unlike our survivalists, their fears of societal collapse were very much grounded in reality. And it’s hard for me to blame the U.S. military for failing to secure the museum – there were so few troops sent that they weren’t even able to provide security for the human beings in Iraq, so I can understand if inanimate objects, however priceless, weren’t the first thing on their minds.

    As with so many things, the blame goes squarely back to the top rungs of the Bush administration.

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