Where are the cheering mobs of Iraqis? Will we be hailed with flowers and kisses from the pretty Iraqi girls?
Sorry Maurice, these folks are ONLY Shia. They don't count right? Neither do the Kurds. After all, the Kurds are just stooges for Bush right?
Iraqis Topple Saddam Statue -- with Help from U.S.
Sun April 6, 2003 12:52 PM ET
reuters.com
The rope slipped from the grasp of the scores of people pulling on it. Then they got it back. Then the statue began to sway. Then the rope snapped and a new one had to be found. But finally, down it came.
Some of the crowd broke into applause as the statue fell head first onto the stepped podium it occupied above a pool of water. People climbed excitedly onto the statue and began beating it with their shoes and anything else they could grab.
"He took a bit more than I thought he would but in the end he came down," said the welder who had wielded the blowtorch, Specialist Gerry Reichardt, a 23-year-old from Honolulu, Hawaii, as some local people clamored to congratulate him.
"Good, good, good Mr. W. Bush, no Saddam," an elderly man in the crowd declared to a Western reporter in broken English.
The crowd's reaction was typical of the welcome U.S. forces have received from many in Kerbala, one of the centers of a brutally crushed revolt against Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War.
U.S. soldiers from the battalion, based at Fort Riley in Kansas, proudly displayed flowers given to them by local people from the small garden in front of the statue.
But it is hard to gauge whether the enthusiasm of a few thousand is indicative of the city's whole population. Two brothers in the crowd said they were glad to see U.S. troops here and could not understand countries which opposed the war.
"Everyone who refuses this war ... why? Come here and live two days with this man," said Basil, a bearded 25-year-old, as he pointed to the toppled statue. "And then refuse this war." |
