Apr. 10, 2003. 05:35 AM
JEROME DELAY/AP
An Iraqi watches yesterday as Marines mount the now-toppled statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos or
 
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Freedom reigns in Baghdad unbound

ROSIE DIMANNO
IN BAGHDAD

Liberation. Emancipation. And deliverance from evil.

This is how freedom feels in Baghdad unbound: All giddy and delirious, a city intoxicated with joy. As if a great dam of yearning has burst, flooding the capital with rapture and merriment.


Video: Windows Media | Real

They danced in the streets. They threw flowers at American troops. They set fire to the omnipresent portraits of President Saddam Hussein.

And when Sgt. David Sutherland of Bravo Company, First Tank Battalion, 4th Marines, tied a thick chain noose around Saddam's neck — not the real Saddam, alas, but a colossal bronze version of the reviled dictator in Firdos Square downtown, the one where he resembles very much his hero Stalin — winching the cable to a tow-tank and yanking the statue off its pedestal, the throng of Iraqis gathered 'round squealed in delight.

"DOWN SADDAM!" they hollered, "FALL SADDAM!" as the statue cracked at the knees, then slowly, ever so slowly, lurched face-forward, the president's outstretched hand now perpendicular to the ground in a most undignified prone position. With the crowd pelting stones at the image, some men even flinging their shoes at it, the tow-tank inched down a set of concrete steps, tightening the cable until finally the statue was dismembered and shredded.

It was a symbolic, transcendent moment. It was history in the making.

"This is our Iwo Jima," Sutherland crowed, as Baghdadis nearly smothered him to death with gratitude. "Man, I'm loving it."

Like that statue, the Saddam Hussein regime is on its knees. If his hateful autocracy isn't quite finished yet, it's just hanging on by the breadth of a moustache hair.

"I cannot express to you my happiness at this moment," said a tearful Shakir Ali Skhil Al Dilam. "This is like a dream come true. Almost all my life, I have waited for my country to be free of this bastard Saddam Hussein. I am 47 years old, but I feel like today I have been reborn.

"Please, please, tell the Americans how thankful we are. I love America! And I think America must love us, too, to have done this. I am just sorry that so many American and British had to die in my country, so that we could be free. I hope, for all these martyrs, a place in paradise."

But what of the Iraqi civilians, the women and children and elderly, who've been killed in the past three weeks? Al Dilam bows his head.

"I am sorry for them. I feel pain in my heart for all these innocents who were killed. But they died because of Saddam Hussein.

"This is the shame of Iraq. That so many people had to die, not just civilians but soldiers who had no choice but to fight. And for what? This is how it had to end. Iraq was never going to win this war."

The war is not over, but it has climaxed. It crested here yesterday afternoon, with U.S. troops entering unopposed into the heart of Baghdad, taking firm control of the capital and welcomed as the liberators they'd always professed to be.

The Americans got it right. Goddamn, they got it right. And it is to Canada's eternal shame that we wanted no part of this.

It was fitting that the 1st Tank Battalion, 4th Marines, took the starring role at Firdos Square. Its members believe themselves to have been the most battle-scarred of the invading coalition forces, having spearheaded the attack from the moment it crossed the Kuwait border three weeks ago: fierce fighting in Basra, in Kut, crossing the Euphrates, then on a pontoon bridge they laid across the River Tigris two nights ago. "The tip of the spear, that's us," a rightfully proud Sutherland declared.

The marines entered the city from the north — even as the 3rd Infantry Division engaged with loyalist Saddam Fedayeen on the opposite side of the city, with firefights still raging around the eastern end of the Jumhuriya Bridge, near Tahrir Square.

The battalion began to mass around 3 p.m., in a heavy armour convoy of some 150 vehicles, transporting about 1,000 marines. But it had been clear for several hours beforehand that Baghdad was about to fall. Yesterday morning, officials from the Iraqi Ministry of Information had failed to appear at the two media hotels where reporters would daily receive their permission slips for approved excursions around the city. Government minders disappeared, hired drivers bolted and suddenly no one seemed in charge any more.

In the old section of the city, where even the mosques had locked their doors, regular army units began to melt away, abandoning their sandbagged positions, leaving behind pieces of artillery and nests of machine guns. The much vaunted, elite Republican Guards, ostensibly protecting the city core, were nowhere evident. Only Baath party fighters and Fedayeen paramilitaries held their ground, careering through the dusty streets in the back of pickup trucks and continuing to shout pro-Saddam slogans. "We love you Saddam! We die for you Saddam!"

But once looting began to break out, it was obvious that the city was falling into chaos and the centre would not hold. In a posh apartment district along the east side of the Tigris — home to many Baath party leaders and military brass — a free-for-all took hold, civilians charging boldly into the building and emerging with whatever they could carry: dining room chairs, lamps, sofas, silverware, mattresses, appliances, refrigerators, air conditioning units. Fedayeen struggling to maintain order shot dead several looters but could not hold back the tide.

Indeed, it seemed as if the Fedayeen and the Baath party fighters were even turning on each other.

"Oh my God, it's madness, everyone has gone crazy," cried out Addas Radie, a 52-year-old textile businessman who spent 12 years living in Toronto before returning to Baghdad. He has a wife and four children in Montreal, another wife and two children here.

"I am a Canadian citizen. But I'm still an Iraqi in my heart. I don't want people in my country to steal from each other. What are they doing? I tell you, I am ashamed.

"But this means there is no control. And if there's no control, that means the government has fallen."

Inside the Shiite quarter of Saddam City, there was both glee and pandemonium on the streets. But Fedayeen maintained the access roads into the long-seething neighbourhood, the same district where anti-Saddam riots had been brutally put down at the end of Desert Storm 12 years ago, then again in 1998.

With various areas locked in, surrounded either by American troops or government loyalists, hardly anyone had a grasp of the bigger picture or knew what was happening a few blocks distant.

"They're still trying to fool the people into believing the Americans aren't in Baghdad," snorted Radie, as he steered his Mercedes through various neighbourhoods, a couple of reporters in tow. But a spray of machine-gun fire brought that little venture to an end.

Anarchy quickly enveloped the district. Cars were being hot-wired and stolen. It was every man for himself. Yet, bizarrely, many Baghdadis still went about their ordinary business in the middle of it all, lining up for bread at the handful of open bakeries, queuing for water. The distinctive, red double-decker buses continued to trundle through the neighbourhood, detouring around blockaded roads.

The marines were by then in place on outer Karrada St., observed by Iraqis hanging out of their windows or clustering along the edge of the road. Reporters carrying white flags walked out the kilometre from Firdos Square to join them, warily watched the entire way through the crosshairs of machine guns. At the forefront of the convoy was a tank with the word "BITCH" scribbled on its long gun.

Battalion commander Lt.-Col. B.P. McCoy, tall and laconic, was speaking into a radio in his Oklahoman drawl: "It's a very warm reception we're getting here ... We're heading for the Palestine (Hotel) now ... No, I'm not going in there and blowing off the locks."

The reception was, indeed, warm and that was very much a relief to the sweaty and begrimed marines, who'd battled their way north through some pretty hostile terrain, not knowing what to expect in Baghdad.

"Back up the road a bit, we had to climb up to a roof to look for a sniper who'd been taking shots at us," said Staff Sgt. Dino Moreno, a 31-year-old Californian. "And the people who lived there couldn't have been nicer. They escorted us up and then gave us cigarettes."

It's usually the soldiers who hand out cigarettes, isn't it?

Moreno lifted his pinkie finger to show a reporter a silver ring with a milky blue stone that an Iraqi woman had just given him. "Don't know what I'm gonna do with it. Try not to lose it, for one thing.

"It's been just amazing. Everyone waving and so happy to see us. And this is what it's all about, right? I mean, that's why we're here, isn't it? To bring these people freedom?"

Certainly not all Baghdadis greeted the Americans with open arms. "This is freedom?" demanded Fadia, an 18-year-old who'd come down from her apartment to scowl at the troops. "We were living in peace. Now I have no water, no electricity. There was no need for this war. What we need is Saddam."

But that was most assuredly a minority view, on this day.

"The Americans are saving us from the biggest devil in the war," countered Tarek Hana, 51, as he waved beckoningly toward the convoy, standing at an intersection in his billowing white galabiyya. "Thirty-four years I have been waiting for this day. Saddam, he was a cancer in our hearts."

Moving slowly toward Firdos Square, the convoy would stop every few metres, gun turrets revolving, marines scanning the rooftops and peering into side streets for any hint of resistance or threat of attack. But they encountered only flowing crowds of well-wishers, even as they passed a Baath party office.

The approach to the square took so long that some marines began to break out their MREs — meals ready to eat — for a quick snack, while others passed theirs to civilians.

From the turret of his vehicle — a tank called "The Love Machine" — Staff Sgt. Daniel Dillo of Houston wiped his neck and eyeballed his surroundings. "Baghdad sure is a lot bigger than I thought. Waitin' a long time to see it. And now I wanna go home. Just finish this up and go home to my family."

For some of these troops, it has been months since they shipped out.

Yet they were savouring the moment of their triumph and the tremendous affection with which they were greeted.

The only overt display of antagonism was a small clutch of human shields — mostly elderly Western women — who hissed at the Americans, deriding them as "assassins," a couple holding aloft a sign that read: "Go Home You U.S. Wankers."

The marines ignored them.

Finally, the lead tanks entered into Firdos Square. The reception was tumultuous.

"Sure isn't Disney World," noted Lt. Casey Kuhlman, looking around at the tattered grass and dirty fountain water. "But give us time."

Someone put a torch to the gargantuan portrait of Saddam hanging outside the Palestine Hotel. Then a rope was lassoed around the aforementioned statue — but that quickly snapped on the first attempt to bring it down. The rope was replaced by the cable wire.

"This is it!'' Sgt. Dan Finn of Boston — with "FDNY 343" scrawled on his combat helmet — warned as the statue became dislodged. "Down he goes!"

And down he went.

As night fell — officially, there's still a 5 p.m. curfew in Baghdad — the crowd began to thin, people departing arm in arm, swaying almost drunkenly, fitting a few final flowers into the marines' gunbelts. Tanks clattered into their sentry positions around the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, their occupants knowing full well that at least one more battle looms directly ahead, on the morrow. The Fedayeen are still dug in a few blocks away.

But it had been a grand day for the U.S.A.

"Beats getting shot at," grunted Lt.-Col. McCoy.

Then he fired up a cigar.

Additional articles by Rosie DiManno





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