Firdos Square -giving them a show

There’s been a smattering of attention today to the third anniversary of the fall of Saddam’s statue in al-Firdos square. At the time, if you recall, the event was held up as symbolizing the liberation of the Iraqi people, the vindication of George Bush and Tony Blair and the utter rout of all those who opposed what was sold as the invasion to disarm Iraq.

The media were almost uniformly ecstatic. Steve Boggan in the London Evening Standard enthused thus,

‘Only when the flowers began landing on our heads did the US marines in the personnel carrier next to me finally loosen their trigger fingers. They had been told to expect urban warfare, street fighting and resistance on a massive scale from a population with a gun in every house.

‘But today, all they got were posies and cheers.

‘I walked the last mile of the liberation of Baghdad with the 3rd Battalion of the 4th Marines Division, along Saddoun Street into Firdos Circle.

‘There, a group of ecstatic young Iraqis did what they have probably wanted to do all their lives - attack a huge statue of Saddam Hussein with stones and hammers.’ (1)

Lara Marlowe and James Doherty, in The Scotsman, take up the story,

‘The centre of Baghdad had fallen, and as the marine corps secured their positions, ordinary Iraqis climbed the 20ft statue to bring down a physical symbol of tyranny.

‘A rope was found and then a ladder. Climbing precariously on to the statue, bystanders cheered as what resembled a noose tightened round the neck of Saddam's effigy.

‘Their makeshift hanging could not be completed, with the rope too short to topple the dictator's statue. Undeterred, men slammed a sledgehammer into the marble plinth keeping it aloft.

‘Despite the best efforts of one burly Iraqi, stripped to his vest, it would not move.

‘As night drew closer, and amid fears that expressions of joy and exuberance could injure bystanders, US soldiers intervened, driving an M88 tank recovery vehicle face to face with the symbol of tyranny.’ (2)

And Anton Antonowicz, in The Mirror, provides the denouement,

‘For an oppressed people this final act in the fading daylight, the wrenching down of this ghastly symbol of the regime, is their Berlin Wall moment. Big Moustache has had his day.

‘I turn to US Gunner Sergeant Leon Lambert from Salida, California, who put the chain round the statue's neck.

‘He tells me: "We gave the people here quite a show, didn't we?"’ (3)

Except that this isn’t what really happened. The destruction of the statue was no spontaneous eruption of Iraqi joy but orchestrated ‘PsyOps’. To his credit, John Lichfield, writing in The Independent, cottoned on immediately, noting that the ‘toppling of the statue… was partly staged. It was a photo-op as much as a moment in time. Several efforts were made to get it right.’ Lichfield deserves credit for providing an all too rare example of journalistic credibility. Even a year later, the BBC’s redoubtable Paul Wood was only able to timidly ask the question ‘Was it American "propaganda by deed", or the spontaneous act of a free people?’ Wood even dares to note that a long shot of al-Firdos (Paradise) Square ‘seemed’ to show it almost empty. ‘Seemed’, Paul?

Of course it was staged. Evidence of this, including several images, appeared on the web almost instantly. The event is also discussed by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in their excellent book Weapons of Mass Deception (4). Still, we don’t need to rely on those damned conspiracy theorists, since we have the US Army’s own word for it. Instead, we can turn to On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, described in its Foreword by General Tommy Franks as a ‘unique’ history of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ (OIF) (incidentally, was there ever a moment when it was called Operation Iraqi Liberation? – I’d like to think so). This following account is from Chapter 6, ‘Regime Collapse’ and is based on an interview with Staff Sergeant Brian Plesich who was in the Square at the time (the italics are mine).

‘As we approached the street leading into the Al-Firdos Square, we could tell that there was a very large crowd of civilians starting to form up. It looked like the infantry unit up there could use some support, so we moved our TPT [tactical PSYOP team] vehicle forward and started to run around seeing what they needed us to do to facilitate their mission.... There was a large media circus at this location (I guess the Palestine Hotel was a media center at the time), almost as many reporters as there were Iraqis, as the hotel was right adjacent to the Al-Firdos Square.

‘The Marine Corps colonel in the area saw the Saddam statue as a target of opportunity and decided that the statue must come down. Since we were right there, we chimed in with some loudspeaker support to let the Iraqis know what it was we were attempting to do. The reporters were completely surrounding the vehicle, and we started having to ask the reporters to move out of the way, but they would not move. We were getting frustrated, but we were also laughing about it. We dismounted the vehicle again and just started pushing the people out of the way. They were starting to really inhibit our ability to conduct our mission. The tanks . . . formed up into a perimeter around the square, with the statue in the middle.

‘An M88 recovery vehicle approached the statue and continued to drive up the steps right next to the statue in an attempt to bring it down. The people had already tied a noose around the neck of the statue with some rope[…]

‘We looked over and now there was an American flag draped over the face of the statue. God bless them, but we were thinking from PSYOP school that this was just bad news. We didn't want to look like an occupation force, and some of the Iraqis were saying, `No, we want an Iraqi flag!' So I said `No problem, somebody get me an Iraqi flag.' […]

‘At this time, the marines had put a chain from the boom of the recovery vehicle around the neck of the statue, and they just ran the [Iraqi] flag up the statue. It was real quick thinking on Staff Sergeant Plesich's part to get that Iraqi flag up there quick[…]

‘Somehow along the way, somebody had gotten the idea to put a bunch of Iraqi kids onto the wrecker that was to pull the statue down. While the wrecker was pulling the statue down, there were Iraqi children crawling all over it. Finally they brought the statue down’ (5)

And there you have it, Iraqis certainly participated but only after the US soldiers has announced through their loudspeakers what they were going to do. Perhaps someone should send Paul Wood a link, so he’ll no longer have to be tormented by doubts about whether it was a ‘spontaneous act of a free people’ or not.

A classic example of successful PsyOps - propaganda – swallowed almost to a man by our craven media and still largely repeated to this day. ‘We gave the people here quite a show’ Gunner Sergeant Leon Lambert said at the time. He was more right than he knew.

Notes.

(1) Steve Boggan, ‘Day of joy and anarchy; 'Nobody here has anything. We're all poor. All our money went to Saddam. I hope he is dead'’, in the Evening Standard April 9 2003.
(2) Lara Marlowe and James Doherty,  ‘Saddam Toppled As Baghdad Is Liberated’, in The Scotsman April 10, 2003
(3)  Anton Antonowicz, ‘Toppling Saddam's Statue Is The Final Triumph For These Oppressed People’ in The Mirror, April 10, 2003.
(4) Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (2003) ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’  Constable & Robinson.
(5) Staff Sergeant Brian Plesich, team leader, Tactical Psychological Operations Team 1153, 305th Psychological Operations Company, interview by Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Cahill, 31 May 2003 in Col. Gregory Fontenot, Lt. Col. E.J. Degen, and Lt. Col. David Tohn ‘On Point:  The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom’, Chapter 6 ‘Regime Collapse’, available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2004/onpoint/ch-6.htm

(6) Note that I have included the long-shot image of al-Firdos square to show that the square was largely empty. I do not endorse every detail of the text embedded in the image.

Comments

[Raoul Djukanovic]

Senator Bunning of Kentucky certainly seemed to think it was all about O.I.L. on March 21, 2003.

After all, as Greg Palast notes, Ari Fleischer said so.

"They were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation until they realised that spells O-I-L," quipped Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, late in March 2003.

Buffoon. They actually did call it that, even after everyone took the piss. Fleischer was still at it on April 1. Fool me once, etcetc...

[Pete]

Illiterate cretin. Banned at Lenin's Tomb, long since banned here.

[Pete]

Pete etc removed.