Audrey Gillan

March 20, 2007 The Guardian.

It is nearly four years since Kadhim al-Jubouri led the toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad.

HIS hands were bleeding and his eyes filled with tears as, four years ago, he slammed a sledgehammer into the tiled plinth that held a seven-metre bronze statue of Saddam Hussein.

Then Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad’s Firdous Square. Now, he is filled with nothing but regret.

The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. Wearing a black vest, Mr Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: “I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.”

The weightlifter had also been a mechanic and had felt the full weight of Saddam’s regime when he was sent to Abu Ghraib prison by the Iraqi leader’s son, Uday, after complaining that he had not been paid for fixing his motorcycle.

He explained: “There were lots of people from my tribe who were also put in prison or hanged. It became my dream ever since I saw them building that statue to one day topple it.”

Yet he now says he would prefer to be living under Saddam than under US occupation.

He said: “The devil you know (is) better than the devil you don’t. We no longer know friend from foe. The situation is becoming more dangerous. It’s not getting better at all. People are poor and the prices are going higher and higher.”

Saddam, he says, “was like Stalin. But the occupation is proving to be worse”.

~~~

A note from Jim:

You all know my views on the Iraq war, and they may or may not be yours, but this kind of report confirms my worst suspicions.

And the answer to solving a terrible mess is never “more of the same”. More troops did not solve Vietnam and after a while about 500,000 US troops were there.

But cutting and running is morally indefensible too. So what is the answer?

Maybe switching involvement to major action in humanitarian aid, and support for any UN initiatives…

All the very best

Jim Reiher

Related Articles:

• Greece: can you believe this/them?
• Syria February 2012: Two Perspectives
• EGYPT: THE GROSS INSECURITY OF THE DHIMMI
• Female Circumcision in the Maldives, the Islamic Movement and Islamophobia
• Australia Day message

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.