Thursday, December 02, 2004
Happy Birthday, From Baghdad...
As usual, Bush won't budge an inch, despite pleas from all corners of Iraqi society... He confirmed this morning "Iraqi elections will be held on schedule on January 30. This is the birthday of Aaron Holsberg, a prominent New York liberal democrat."
At left, "Hands Of Victory," among Baghdad's most famous monuments, which commemorates "victory" in the pointless 1980-1988 war with Iran, which cost a million lives, most of them teenagers. From a site on Baghdad and its attractions:
"The colossal Hands of Victory monument has dominated Baghdad's skyline since the end of the Iran-Iraq war. . The triumphal arch is shaped as two pairs of crossed swords, made from the guns of dead Iraqi soldiers that were melted and recast as the 24-ton blades of the swords. Captured Iranian helmets are in a net held between the swords. And surrounding the base of the arms are another 5,000 Iranian helmets taken from the battle field. The fists that hold the swords aloft are replicas of Saddam Hussein’s own hands. The German company that built the monument, H+H Metalform, said it was given a photograph of Saddam's own forearms to use as a model.
When Saddam inaugurated these triumphal arches, he rode under them on a white horse —an allusion to the steed of Hussein, the Shi'ite Muslim hero martyred at nearby Kerbala. The day before the first bombing run on Bhagdad during the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi TV showed a mass of Iraqi soldiers marching beneath the huge crossed swords of the Victory Arch, to the theme music from 'Star Wars'."
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