“It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue,” The Los Angeles Times reported back in 2004.
Tuesday marked the 10-year anniversary of the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue by U.S. forces, still portrayed by many news outlets as a major tipping point in what turned out to be a protracted, decade-long occupation. Despite information showing that the event was staged as a PR stunt, news outlets still tout the event a decade later as a spontaneous, joyous eruption of recently liberated Iraqis.
“I hope they’re watching this all over the Arab street. ‘Jubilant’ seems too mild a word for what you’re seeing here,” said Fox News broadcasting U.S. forces toppling the Saddam Hussein statue in Firdos Square in 2003.
The public destruction of Hussein’s 16-foot-tall bronze likeness held symbolic value that translated into a PR tool for U.S. forces, symbolizing the sudden eradication of Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist regime that ruled the country for nearly 25 years.
“Al Jazeera is carrying these very same images, so they are playing all over the Arab and the Muslim world,” said a Fox News correspondent.
People from all over the world watched as thousands of Iraqis cheered while U.S. forces attached a chain to the statue, tearing it down with a tank. Citizens threw shoes, stones and garbage while others danced atop the statue of the leader, despised by millions.
The scene was supposed to portray spontaneous celebration by recently “liberated” Iraqis. In reality, it was a carefully orchestrated event designed to extract maximum PR value for coalition forces.
U.S. soldiers also used loudspeakers to gather crowds of Iraqi civilians around the statue, creating a convincing scene worthy of broadcast across the world.
“It was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking,” The Times report added.
For millions of Iraqis, Hussein was a tyrant who ruled with an iron fist and killed thousands of his own citizens. During the Anfal campaign from 1986-1989, Hussein ordered the destruction of 4,500 villages and the mass killing of roughly 5,000, mostly Kurdish citizens in northern Iraq. Seven thousand others were injured in poison gas attacks described by some countries as a “genocide” against Kurds and other ethnic minority groups.
Hussein is long gone, executed December 2006 — but Iraqi civilians continued to suffer throughout the U.S. occupation.
According to the Brown University’s Costs of War Project, 123,000-134,000 civilians were killed as a direct result of the U.S. war.
“Approximately 2.8 million people remain either internally displaced or have fled the country. This means that 1 in 12 Iraqis are still displaced from their homes. Unemployment is high. The health of women and children is the most vulnerable in Iraq and many Iraqis are hungry, and dependent on rations,” Brown University reports.