Army report confirms Psy-ops staged Saddam statue toppling
by Jon Elmer (bio)
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Jul 3 - An internal Army study of the war in Iraq has confirmed that the infamous toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in central Baghdad on April 9, 2003 was stage-managed by American troops and not a spontaneous reaction by Iraqis. According to the study, a Marine colonel first decided to topple the statue, and an Army psychological operations unit turned the event into a propaganda moment.
At one point during the stunt Marines draped the statue of Saddam Hussein with an American flag. When the crowd reacted negatively to that gesture, the US flag was replaced with a pre-1990 Iraqi flag, missing the words "God is Great," by a sergeant from the psychological operations unit. The Marines brought in cheering Iraqi children in order to make the scene appear authentic, the study said.
Allegations that the event was staged were made in April of last year, mostly by opponents of the war, but were ignored or ridiculed by the US government and most visible media outlets.
End Report
I was always susipicious of that whole event, there were hardly any people there, the area was sealed off by tanks, there is a website that shows a picture of one demonstrator and compares it to a picture of a member of Chalabi's army and a new documentary Control Room alleges the same thing. The funny thing is when it happened I could tell it looked stage, but of course nobody in the media questioned it.
