Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I don't read Andrew Sullivan that much, because he mainly strikes me as a twerp with an axe to grind against the world in general and anyone who's ever wronged him in particular. He's now weighing in on the looting of the Iraqi museum, wondering if those who criticized the administration (including, as a general class, yours truly) are willing to apologize now that it's turned out that the number of priceless artifacts stolen is apparently much, much lower than originally thought. (Instead of thousands of priceless items being gone, it now appears that only 33 priceless items are gone, while many more items of "indeterminate value" have disappeared.)

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I have no intention of apologizing for my castigation of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, or anyone else on this point merely because our negligence did not have results quite as lousy as first reported. Just because the officials at the Iraqi Museum spirited a lot of the priceless stuff away to hiding places, in anticipation of rampant looting, doesn't excuse our Administration for its complete failure to prevent that looting in the first place.

Let me put it this way, Mr. Sullivan: if I ever catch my daughter playing with matches, I'm going to yell at her and most likely punish her, even if she doesn't actually ignite the carpet and cause the house to burn to the ground.

"It could have been worse" is not equivalent to, "We did nothing wrong and you owe us an apology".