Mission creep: Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein
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In the third excerpt from his new book, Patrick Cockburn writes from Baghdad on how the US occupation of Iraq faced growing Iraqi anger and resistance in the summer of 2003. Already, there were signs that the war was going to end in disaster
Patrick Cockburn
33 minutes ago
Saddam Hussein with his Revolutionary Command Council in 2003 (Getty Images)
24 July 2003
There used to be a mosaic of President George HW Bush on the floor at the entrance to the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad. It was placed there soon after the first Gulf War in 1991 and was a good likeness, though the artist gave Bush unnaturally jagged teeth and a slightly sinister grimace. The idea was that nobody would be able to get into the hotel, where most foreign visitors to Iraq stayed in the 1990s, without stepping on Bush’s face. The mosaic did not long survive the capture of the city on 9 April 2003 and the takeover of the al-Rashid by US officials and soldiers. One American officer, patriotically determined not to place his foot on Bush’s features, tried to step over the mosaic. The distance was too great. He strained his groin and had to be hospitalised. The mosaic was removed.
Almost all of the thousands of pictures of Saddam Hussein that used to line every main street in Baghdad have gone, though for some reason the one outside the burned-out remains of the old Mukhabarat (Intelligence) headquarters survives. My favourite was straight out of The Sound of Music: it showed Saddam on an Alpine hillside, wearing a tweed jacket, carrying an alpenstock and bending down to sniff a blue flower.
Other equally peculiar signs of Saddam’s presence remain. The Iraqi Natural History Museum was thoroughly ransacked by looters, who even decapitated the dinosaur in the forecourt. In the middle of one large ground-floor gallery, almost the only exhibit still intact is a stuffed white horse that, when living, belonged to Saddam. Wahad Adnan Mahmoud, a painter who also looks after the gallery, told me the horse had been given to the Iraqi leader in 1986 by the King of Morocco. The King had sent a message along with it saying he hoped that Saddam would ride the horse through the streets of Baghdad when Iraq won its war with Iran. Before this could happen, however, a dog bit the horse and it died. Saddam issued a Republican Decree ordering the dog to be executed.
US President George W Bush with US troops stationed at Baghdad International Airport in 2003 (Getty Images)
in full: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/mission-creep-baghdad-after-the-fall-of-saddam-hussein-a6991536.html