The toppling of the statue in Baghdad’s Paradise Square was highly symbolic on a day when emboldened Iraqis cheered U.S. troops and celebrated what they saw as the end of Saddam’s rule. With Saddam’s feared security forces nowhere in sight, Baghdad residents also went on a looting free-for-all, stripping government ministries, even police stations and military posts.
“I’m 49, but I never lived a single day. Only now will I start living,†said Yussuf Abed Kazim, a preacher at a local mosque who bashed the Saddam statue with a sledgehammer as other Iraqis yelled, “Hit the eye! Hit the eye!â€
“That Saddam Hussein is a murderer and a criminal,†Kazim said.
Many in the crowd beat their chests and chanted, “There is a burning in our chests,†a Shiite Muslim slogan. Celebrations were particularly strong in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhoods, like Saddam City in the northeast. In one area, hundreds of jubilant Shiites shouted, “There is no god but Allah!†waving palm fronds and prayer stones.
Shiites make up the majority in Iraq but have long felt oppressed at the hands of Saddam’s largely Sunni Muslim government.
The Saddam statue in Firdos Square, the Arabic word for Paradise, was in the melodramatic Soviet style, depicting the Iraqi president standing tall in civilian clothes with his right arm raised in a wave to his people. Its fall, broadcast live across the Arab world on satellite television, recalled images of Lenin’s statue being pulled down in Russia during the Soviet Union’s collapse.
After the crowd tried for more than an hour to being the statue down, the Marines stepped in to help with a winch on a tank recovery vehicle. The first pull brought the statue halfway down, dangling off its 25-foot-high pedestal as the crowd pelted it with garbage.
Another tug, and it broke in half, leaving only the twisted metal of the feet with two rusted pipes sticking out of them.
