A Reuters long-shot of Firdos Square where the statue was located see below shows that the Square was nearly empty when Saddam was torn down. The Square was sealed off by the U. The people milling about were U.
Marines, international press and Iraqis. However, the media portrayed it as an event of the Iraqi people. An American military vehicle actually pulled down the statue. Marine Corporal Ed Chin, who temporarily placed a U. His sister, Connie, appeared on the "Today" show and spoke with her brother via a video hook-up.
On Point , a US army report on lessons learned from the war, notes that it was a Marine colonel, not Iraqi civilians, who decided to topple the statue.
The Marine Corps colonel in the area saw the Saddam statue as a target of opportunity and decided that the statue must come down. The coalition was always going to win, and Saddam, for all his posturing, was in no position to fight back.
The hyperreality of the Gulf war that Baudrillard described caught the imaginations of writers, artists and film-makers. It looked ever more prescient as the internet began to connect the world. Excitement and anxieties about real versus virtual experiences grew. A hyperreal war was played out in the political comedy film Wag the Dog loosely based on a novel , in which an American president creates a fictional war abroad to distract from a sex scandal at home.
Hyperreality was the basis of the action science-fiction blockbuster The Matrix. A ground invasion was the focus. The battle is still going on. Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Behind him, viewers could see Iraqi troops fleeing from American tanks on the other side of the river. It would be presented to the world as a climax: the triumph of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The coalition forces were cast as liberators, allowing the Iraqi people to rise up at last and tear down the most powerful symbol of the dictator who had oppressed them. But the reality was not so simple. Since they had invaded Iraq on 20 March, coalition forces had been pulling down dozens of statues of Saddam.
For example, on 29 March, British forces had blown up a cast-iron statue of him in Basra. But no one filmed this event, so — while it was reported by the BBC and other news organisations — it made little impact outside Basra itself.
Their commander ordered his troops to find a statue that could be destroyed, and to wait until Fox News arrived before they began to destroy it. Soon enough, they found an equestrian statue of Saddam. The television crew turned up, and the soldiers duly fired a shell.
The footage was not exciting — just Americans destroying stuff, no crowd of grateful Iraqis — so it did not get much play. The next day, British troops took out another one in Basra. There were so many statues of Saddam in Iraq that they were being felled on a daily basis.
A number of international journalists who were covering the invasion moved into the Palestine Hotel on Firdos Square, where Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf held his amusing press conferences. Though the Palestine Hotel was known to be a media refuge, an American tank fired a shell at it on 8 April, mistaking a camera on a balcony for an Iraqi spotting device.
Two journalists were killed, three were injured, and the rest were outraged. It was fortunate, then, that a story would come along to distract them from their anger at the Pentagon the next day, and that it would happen on Firdos Square — right outside their hotel.
Fortunate, but not planned by the Pentagon. The story was created spontaneously by American soldiers on the ground. It was spun into a full-blown global event by the international news media. McCoy went into the Palestine Hotel to meet reporters. Just after 5pm, Lambert radioed Lewis again, telling him that now local Iraqis themselves wanted to pull down the statue. There were a few of them in the square, and a lot of journalists. Kadhim claimed that he had once fixed motorcycles for Saddam and his son Uday, but there had been a dispute over money.
Uday had him thrown in prison. When he heard American forces were coming, he was happy. He says he took his sledgehammer and left his nearby garage to go to Firdos Square. Lambert says he gave the Iraqis his sledgehammer, though Kadhim claims to have brought his own. It is unclear, then, whether the idea to attack the statue came from a relatively low-ranking US soldier, from an Iraqi civilian, or from both.
Kadhim began to hammer at the statue, but all he could really do was get a couple of plaques off the base. There was little chance of this small crowd toppling such a large bronze. An hour went by. Saddam was not budging. At this point, the handful of Iraqis having a go at the statue seemed inclined to give up and go home. Just then, McCoy came out of the hotel. You have this Paris feel. I remember thinking, the media is watching the Iraqis trying to topple this icon of Saddam Hussein.
McCoy radioed a senior officer, who authorised him to involve troops directly in pulling down the statue. McCoy told his troops they could use the M recovery vehicle after all, providing there were no fatalities.
Around 6. Finally, the statue snapped off its plinth, leaving its feet behind. Iraqis ran forward, jumped on it and danced. It was crushed to pieces. There, he had seen an Iraqi man who had pulled down a different Saddam statue.
It was tied to the back of his car with a cable. Whenever the man saw a group of people, he would stop. They would all crowd around Saddam and start hitting him with their shoes. Shoes are considered dirty in the Middle East: it is rude to show someone the soles of your shoes, and a terrible insult to hit them with a shoe. In , an Iraqi journalist would make international news when he threw a shoe at George W Bush. Only one of the Saddam topplings made the front pages, and it was not the one that Iraqis had done for themselves.
There was a real story here about pulling down a statue in Saddam City. As two hours of non-stop coverage of Firdos Square was beamed around the world that night, the news networks desperately wanted it to have a meaning.
Over on Fox, the anchors agreed. CNN replayed it every 7. The coverage of Firdos Square — which heavily implied that the statue had been pulled down by a large crowd of cheering Iraqis — suggested that the war was over. The hated dictator was symbolically ousted when his statue fell. In reality, it was not the end.
The fighting was still going on. Armed engagements were underway in Baghdad and northern Iraq while the pageant was proceeding in Firdos Square.
Saddam would not be captured for another seven months. Stories abounded that he had body doubles: a German TV show suggested in that there were at least three of them. An Iraqi doctor claimed that the real Saddam had died in and had been played by doubles ever since. When the real Saddam was dragged out of the hole he had been hiding in, it was like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the curtain is pulled back.
Suddenly everyone can see that the Wizard is not some all-powerful demigod, but an ordinary little man who has made his own myth. The real Saddam — scruffy, hairy and wizened — was a world away from the proud statues showing him astride rocket-powered horses. A t the time, the fall of the Firdos Square statue was presented as a satisfying end to the story of the invasion of Iraq. He delivered a speech announcing that major operations in Iraq had ceased.
The photograph was widely assumed to signify that victory in the Pacific was imminent: in fact, the Battle of Iwo Jima would go on for another month, and three of the six Marines in the picture would die in it. The war in the Pacific did not end until September But the end of that war, as signified by pulling down the statue of Saddam in Firdos Square, was a perfect Baudrillardian simulation.
The media turned an impromptu performance by a few American soldiers into a highly convincing television series finale in which the Iraqi people defeated their dictator.
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