thedrifter
04-07-03, 08:30 AM
Iraqis Topple Saddam Statue -- with Help from U.S.
Sun April 6, 2003 12:52 PM ET
By Andrew Gray
KERBALA, Iraq (Reuters) - It took longer than the U.S. army anticipated but Saddam Hussein was toppled on Sunday -- in an operation that began with a blowtorch to the ankles.
The Saddam in question was a 15-foot-high bronze statue of the Iraqi leader in the city of Kerbala, around 50 miles south of Baghdad, and his downfall came at the hands of local people pulling on a rope, after some help from U.S. forces.
When U.S. soldiers moved on Saturday into Kerbala -- a holy city for Shia Muslims, many of whom have long opposed Saddam and his mainly Sunni Muslim ruling elite -- local people asked them to take down the statue of the Iraqi president, soldiers said.
British troops have already razed a Saddam statue in the second city of Basra and invading forces have ripped down and smashed up the ubiquitous portraits of the president wherever they go.
Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion 70th armored regiment agreed to help and on Sunday afternoon they arrived at the statue of Saddam. The Iraqi leader was in military uniform, his right hand outstretched and an impassive expression on his face.
A welder began to use a blowtorch on the lower leg, aiming to weaken the statue enough so local people could pull it down. A crowd of a few hundred onlookers, mainly young men and boys, gathered and swelled to several thousand by the time the statue finally fell.
"It's very good because we don't like it," a man in a gray shirt said of the operation before melting back into the crowd.
Like the real Saddam, the bronze imitation proved more resilient than some observers expected. Only after about an hour of the blowtorch, as smoke floated through a hole in the chest, did the statue start to look vulnerable.
The rope slipped from the grasp of the scores of people pulling on it. Then they got it back. Then the statue began to sway. Then the rope snapped and a new one had to be found. But finally, down it came.
Some of the crowd broke into applause as the statue fell head first onto the stepped podium it occupied above a pool of water. People climbed excitedly onto the statue and began beating it with their shoes and anything else they could grab.
"He took a bit more than I thought he would but in the end he came down," said the welder who had wielded the blowtorch, Specialist Gerry Reichardt, a 23-year-old from Honolulu, Hawaii, as some local people clamored to congratulate him.
"Good, good, good Mr. W. Bush, no Saddam," an elderly man in the crowd declared to a Western reporter in broken English.
The crowd's reaction was typical of the welcome U.S. forces have received from many in Kerbala, one of the centers of a brutally crushed revolt against Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War.
U.S. soldiers from the battalion, based at Fort Riley in Kansas, proudly displayed flowers given to them by local people from the small garden in front of the statue.
But it is hard to gauge whether the enthusiasm of a few thousand is indicative of the city's whole population. Two brothers in the crowd said they were glad to see U.S. troops here and could not understand countries which opposed the war.
"Everyone who refuses this war ... why? Come here and live two days with this man," said Basil, a bearded 25-year-old, as he pointed to the toppled statue. "And then refuse this war."
But both he and his 28-year-old brother Ali acknowledged there was some suspicion of U.S. intentions, particularly as people remember that Washington did nothing to assist the 1991 uprising after having called on the Iraqi people to oust Saddam.
http://wwwi.reuters.com/images/mdf250624.jpg
Iraqi citizens pull down a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with the help of U.S. soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 70 Armor and 101 Airborne division, in the town of Kerbala southwest of Baghdad, April 6, 2003. Bombs and artillery thundered across Baghdad as U.S. forces tightened their grip on the capital's outskirts, bringing up more troops and cutting approaches on three sides of the embattled city. Photo by Peter Andrews/Reuters
Sempers,
Roger
Sun April 6, 2003 12:52 PM ET
By Andrew Gray
KERBALA, Iraq (Reuters) - It took longer than the U.S. army anticipated but Saddam Hussein was toppled on Sunday -- in an operation that began with a blowtorch to the ankles.
The Saddam in question was a 15-foot-high bronze statue of the Iraqi leader in the city of Kerbala, around 50 miles south of Baghdad, and his downfall came at the hands of local people pulling on a rope, after some help from U.S. forces.
When U.S. soldiers moved on Saturday into Kerbala -- a holy city for Shia Muslims, many of whom have long opposed Saddam and his mainly Sunni Muslim ruling elite -- local people asked them to take down the statue of the Iraqi president, soldiers said.
British troops have already razed a Saddam statue in the second city of Basra and invading forces have ripped down and smashed up the ubiquitous portraits of the president wherever they go.
Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion 70th armored regiment agreed to help and on Sunday afternoon they arrived at the statue of Saddam. The Iraqi leader was in military uniform, his right hand outstretched and an impassive expression on his face.
A welder began to use a blowtorch on the lower leg, aiming to weaken the statue enough so local people could pull it down. A crowd of a few hundred onlookers, mainly young men and boys, gathered and swelled to several thousand by the time the statue finally fell.
"It's very good because we don't like it," a man in a gray shirt said of the operation before melting back into the crowd.
Like the real Saddam, the bronze imitation proved more resilient than some observers expected. Only after about an hour of the blowtorch, as smoke floated through a hole in the chest, did the statue start to look vulnerable.
The rope slipped from the grasp of the scores of people pulling on it. Then they got it back. Then the statue began to sway. Then the rope snapped and a new one had to be found. But finally, down it came.
Some of the crowd broke into applause as the statue fell head first onto the stepped podium it occupied above a pool of water. People climbed excitedly onto the statue and began beating it with their shoes and anything else they could grab.
"He took a bit more than I thought he would but in the end he came down," said the welder who had wielded the blowtorch, Specialist Gerry Reichardt, a 23-year-old from Honolulu, Hawaii, as some local people clamored to congratulate him.
"Good, good, good Mr. W. Bush, no Saddam," an elderly man in the crowd declared to a Western reporter in broken English.
The crowd's reaction was typical of the welcome U.S. forces have received from many in Kerbala, one of the centers of a brutally crushed revolt against Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War.
U.S. soldiers from the battalion, based at Fort Riley in Kansas, proudly displayed flowers given to them by local people from the small garden in front of the statue.
But it is hard to gauge whether the enthusiasm of a few thousand is indicative of the city's whole population. Two brothers in the crowd said they were glad to see U.S. troops here and could not understand countries which opposed the war.
"Everyone who refuses this war ... why? Come here and live two days with this man," said Basil, a bearded 25-year-old, as he pointed to the toppled statue. "And then refuse this war."
But both he and his 28-year-old brother Ali acknowledged there was some suspicion of U.S. intentions, particularly as people remember that Washington did nothing to assist the 1991 uprising after having called on the Iraqi people to oust Saddam.
http://wwwi.reuters.com/images/mdf250624.jpg
Iraqi citizens pull down a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with the help of U.S. soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 70 Armor and 101 Airborne division, in the town of Kerbala southwest of Baghdad, April 6, 2003. Bombs and artillery thundered across Baghdad as U.S. forces tightened their grip on the capital's outskirts, bringing up more troops and cutting approaches on three sides of the embattled city. Photo by Peter Andrews/Reuters
Sempers,
Roger