Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [253]
After pushing through the Karbala Gap on the outskirts of Baghdad and securing the river crossings into the capital, U.S. forces were poised to take the city. Some of the fiercest fighting took place around Baghdad International Airport.* Intelligence was reporting that Fedayeen, regular army and Republican Guard units had massed in central Baghdad. U.S. troops launched what became known as thunder runs into the heart of the city to test the strength of the resistance.
As columns of U.S. tanks and armored vehicles sped through Baghdad, the world was introduced to an unconventional celebrity. He was a figure who not only provided comic relief in a time of war, but also offered a disturbing insight into the delusional world that was the Saddam Hussein regime. The Iraqi minister of information, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, popularly known as Baghdad Bob, had a special talent for either ignoring unwelcome facts or lying about them shamelessly.
After U.S. forces seized the Baghdad airport, he claimed: “We butchered the forces present at the airport. We have retaken the airport! There are no Americans there!” But as Baghdad Bob was making his wild pronouncements on television, just around the corner American forces seized Saddam’s parade ground downtown. Confronted with this evidence, he was impressively undaunted. “There you can see,” Baghdad Bob said. “There is nothing going on.”15
Despite Baghdad Bob’s protestations to the contrary, the U.S. military’s thunder runs into Baghdad damaged the Iraqi forces’ morale and killed large numbers of Iraqi and foreign fighters. U.S. forces encountered not the Special Republican Guard divisions they expected but instead legions of jihadists on the streets of Baghdad. Saddam knew his Republican Guard tank divisions were no match for the American military, but the fanatics armed with small weapons and craving martyrdom proved to be formidable foes.
On April 9, 2003, the Marines reached Firdos Square in the heart of Baghdad. “The midget Bush and that Rumsfeld deserve only to be beaten with shoes by freedom-loving people everywhere,” Baghdad Bob declared, as American troops fixed a rope around the neck of the larger than life statue of Saddam that dominated the square, much as his likeness populated the rest of the capital city and the entire country.16
Our forces were understandably exhilarated by the prospects of the liberation of Baghdad they had made possible. As the statue of Saddam was pulled down by Iraqis and Marines, one Marine draped an American flag over the statue’s head. I remember General Myers expressing concern and calling someone at CENTCOM to fix the problem. Whether Myers’ message got through or not, the American flag was removed. As the statue came down, a crowd of Iraqis began to beat Saddam’s likeness with their shoes—an Arab expression of disrespect. Critics of the war would belittle those who claimed the Iraqis would greet the Americans as liberators—and to be sure not all Iraqis did—but in Firdos Square that day, the sentiment was clearly one of liberation.
Saddam’s regime collapsed twenty-one days after the war began. The invasion was accomplished with skill, precision, and speed—and a minimum of casualties—by Franks, his team at CENTCOM, and the men and women volunteers in uniform. It was a heady moment. Less than two years after 9/11, the U.S. military had changed the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, two of the world’s leading sponsors