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Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue

David Zucchino | 04.07.2004 16:59 | Analysis | World

This was last year by many laughed at as “US propaganda show”. As usual we where accused of the anti this, anti that, give me proof and it’s only conspiracy theories. Well now the US army is saying what we said last year.
So what other things have been done and are being done to look like it is actions by Iraqis, said by Iraqis and written by Iraqis?


Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue

David Zucchino

July 3, 2004 "Los Angeles Times" -- The Army's internal study of the war in Iraq criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion.

As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.

After the colonel — who was not named in the report — selected the statue as a "target of opportunity," the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member.

But Marines had draped an American flag over the statue's face.

"God bless them, but we were thinking … that this was just bad news," the member of the psychological unit said. "We didn't want to look like an occupation force, and some of the Iraqis were saying, 'No, we want an Iraqi flag!' "

Someone produced an Iraqi flag, and a sergeant in the psychological operations unit quickly replaced the American flag.

Ultimately, a Marine recovery vehicle toppled the statue with a chain, but the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the psychological team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children.

— David Zucchino

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

This is links from last years photos:
 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm
 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm
 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3024.htm


David Zucchino

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

The falseness goes very deep

04.07.2004 21:24


Eyebrows, teeth, physiognomy says it all
Another shallow display. At least most half-alive people intuit it to be so

 http://joevialls.altermedia.info/iraq/vaudeville.html

dh


And?

05.07.2004 10:35

Of course the toppling of the statue was army managed! Not only is this old news (reported on Indymedia many times shortly after the event), but its pretty stupid thinking that the 'toppling' was anything more than a Blair/Bush managed publicity coup. Do you really think the Iraqi's were out toppling statues when a foreign army was shooting at anyone who moved, and Saddam loyalists were conducting guerilla attacks against them? For fucks sake.

Krop


And...

06.07.2004 17:12

Krop, the difference between whatever was on Indymedia before and this latest story is simple - this is a corporate journalist quoting actual declassified government documents saying that the whole thing was a staged propaganda stunt. This is the LA Times and the US Army, of all people, saying that we told the truth and that all the usual sources, CNN, Fox, ITN or whoever, were misleading everybody all along.

Now, whenever the subject of that statue crops up in our regular arguments with the diehard remnants of the pro-war camp, we don't have to rant like loons about how it was fucking obvious that the whole thing was staged. We've got the documentary evidence on our side to prove it too!

One more little weapon in the anti-war arsenal.

Aim Here