U.S. troops leaving Saddam's palaces

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Published Monday, June 13, 2011 12:16 AM By REBECCA SANTANA
Associated Press

BAGHDAD -- Available soon: nine palaces in lakeside complex frequented by visiting kings and dictators, beautiful molded ceilings and light fixtures, many bidets, Saddam Hussein mural and former prison cell. As is, with Tomahawk missile damage. Contact: U.S. Army.

Thus might read a real estate ad for the Victory Base Complex, one of the many properties the U.S. military is vacating as the Dec. 31 deadline for its withdrawal from Iraq approaches. It will leave behind probably some of the most elaborate, some would say tacky, office spaces ever used by American soldiers, sailors or Marines.

The U.S. military has been headquartered in the complex near Baghdad International Airport almost since GIs reached Baghdad in 2003. Countless U.S. dignitaries have passed through.

By the time the dictator was toppled, he had built about 75 palaces and VIP complexes nationwide. That is according to the then U.S. military historian's report on the Victory Base Complex written last year.

Touring the complex is a bit like touring Saddam's mind.

There is the Victory over Iran palace, commemorating the 1980-1988 war he started that ended in stalemate and half a million dead. And the Victory over America palace commemorating the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S.-led coalition drove Saddam's invading forces out of Kuwait.

"Any war that Saddam survived was a victory," said Col. Les Melnyk, the former U.S. military historian in Iraq.

Now the Iraqi government must figure out what to do with all this square footage.

It already is turning a palace complex in the southern city of Basra into a museum. A palace near the ruins of Babylon may become a hotel.

Bahaa Mayah heads an Iraqi committee that decides on the fate of the palaces and recently toured the Victory complex.

He thought it would make a good presidential complex, being near the airport.

"When a foreign president or prime minister visits Iraq, we close all the streets, and a lot of security measures are taken and so it really disturbs the traffic inside Baghdad," he said. "So the best place is near the airport where the president can receive his guests without any security burden."

Now Iraqis must decide how to place Saddam's grand designs in their historical context -- to raze them as bitter memories, or recycle them for a future free of American occupation.

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Source: http://www.theeagle.com/world/U-S--troops-leaving-Saddam-s-palaces

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