The Day Saddam Hussein’s Statue Came Down

On the Media

WNYC Studios

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On April 9, 2003, a US marine battalion rolled triumphantly into Firdos Square, in the center of Baghdad, two and a half weeks after the US invasion of Iraq began. Hours later, the marines toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein, amongst what seemed like a roaring, jubilant crowd of Iraqis. It became, perhaps, the most televised image of the Iraq War — and it seared itself into the minds of its viewers. Twenty years later, that image is still circulated, and sometimes celebrated.

Peter Maass, then a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, stood at the edge of Firdos Square that day. What he witnessed, was vastly different from what viewers were seeing on their television screens across the world. Years later, Maass reconstructed the chain of events that led to the toppling to see what went wrong. For this week's podcast extra, he speaks with Brooke about how the media subconsciously creates events for itself to cover — and how the rampant misconceptions that followed in the wake of the toppling led to a pernicious view of the Iraq War that we're still trying to divorce from today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is On the Media, I'm Brick Gladstone.
0:03.6	This week marks 20 years since George W. Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln in front of a banner
0:11.4	that red mission accomplished uttered these words.
0:15.1	My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended.
0:20.8	In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
0:29.2	One month earlier in the Iraqi capital, there was another moment to victory declared.
0:34.7	It too did not stand the test of time.
0:38.2	On the right hand part of the screen, which we've been watching now for an hour and a half,
0:42.0	Iraqi citizens at first throwing shoes at the statue,
0:45.0	been wrapping a rope around the neck of the statue now being helped out by a US tow truck vehicle
0:53.3	to bring down the statue.
0:55.0	And again, here you have the marine up there.
0:58.7	What is he doing?
0:59.8	Oh, there he is.
1:00.6	He's throwing an American flag.
1:02.3	Yeah.
1:03.3	Yeah.
1:04.3	The right leg of the left leg is going to a piece of the debris coming off the statue.
1:09.6	And now it's all...
1:14.3	A cheer goes around the square, people are waving their hands.
1:19.3	And the statue, the hollow statue of Saddam is left angling from this marble clinic.
1:26.4	It was, perhaps, the most televised event of the Iraq War.
	...

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