November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Photos Tell a Different Story of Statue Toppling

April 2003
Craig Cox Utne.com 
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The ?historic? scene of huge crowds celebrating the toppling of Saddam Hussein?s statue Wednesday was compared by breathless TV announcers and newspaper reporters to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But photos released by Reuters today tell a very different story.

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The crowd never amounted to more than 200 people?including a huge press contingent and the American troops who ringed Fardus Square with tanks, reports Information Clearinghouse. And while the joy in the faces of Iraqi citizens at the scene was certainly genuine and the symbolism unmistakably triumphal, the reportage by TV and newspapers was more than a little deceptive.

?The masses are no doubt glad to see the back of Saddam Hussein,? the report notes, ?but this was a U.S. Army propaganda coup.?

See the photos at:

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