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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
They were going to decorate with antiquities from the Baghdad museum but they all got stolen

Incidentally, here are your freeper pals passing along the story that the governor had been freed:

• Gunmen freed the kidnapped governor of Iraq’s western Anbar province today after US troops ended a week-long offensive in the region, relatives and a government official said. “He was released and he is currently in the (village) of Obeidi,” Governor Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi’s cousin, Safi Jalal, said. “People celebrated by firing shots in the air.” Al-Mahalawi was seized on Tuesday as he drove from the Syrian border town of Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi. The governor’s kidnappers told the family he would be released when US troops withdrew from Qaim. They also offered to exchange the governor for three followers of Iraq’s most wanted terrorists, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who they said were seized in the US offensive, according to the family. Ahmed Hadi, an official at Iraq’s Ministry of Provincial Affairs, confirmed al-Mahalawi was released in the early hours of this morning, but declined to provide any details of how this happened. The governor’s cousin said he was released without conditions. The US military declared its week-long offensive over yesterday, saying it had cleared an insurgent haven near the Syrian border and killed about 125 militants.

See also Reuters.

Today, Reuters reported:

• The governor of Iraq's biggest province, who was kidnapped earlier this month, has been found dead along with his militant captors after a clash with U.S. forces, a government spokesman said on Tuesday.
  
  Laith Kubba told a news conference the body of Anbar governor Raja Nawaf was found tied to a gas canister in a house near the town of Rawa two days ago.
  
  He was discovered after U.S. forces conducted a routine sweep through a neighborhood and met fierce resistance from insurgents in the house.
  
  The authorities do not know how Nawaf died but it was likely that concrete fell on him after the clashes triggered explosives in the house, Kubba said.

Funny, that.