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Toppling Saddam..... and the truth with media's help


Photo credited to AP. U.S. Marines help bring down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein in a square in central Baghdad in April 2004.

Glen Greenwald, writing in Salon, follows up on and analyses a piece in The New Yorker on the now well-known image of a giant statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled in Baghdad not long after the invasion of Iraq in "Shock and Awe". As is so often the case the truth of what really happened is different to the PR spin and what the Western media lapped up and ran with.

"In this week's New Yorker, Peter Maass -- who was in Iraq covering the war at the time -- examines the iconic, manufactured toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square, an event the American media relentlessly exploited in April, 2003, to propagandize citizens into believing that Iraqis were gleeful over the U.S. invasion and that the war was a smashing success. Acknowledging that the episode demonstrated that American troops had taken over the center of Baghdad, Maas nonetheless explains that "everything else the toppling was said to represent during repeated replays on television -- victory for America, the end of the war, joy throughout Iraq -- was a disservice to the truth."

Working jointly with ProPublica on this investigation, Maass describes the hidden, indispensable role the U.S. military played in that event -- which has long been known -- though he convincingly argues that the primary culprit in this propaganda effort was the Americans media. That is who did more than anyone to wildly distort this event. As usual, the Watchdog Press not only happily ingests and trumpets pro-government propaganda, but does so even more enthusiastically and uncritically than government spokespeople themselves."

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