Tahrir 2011, Firdos 2003
Category: Photos
Being There
If you were at Firdos Square on April 9, 2003, you would end up in somebody’s picture. This photo was shot by Robert Nickelsberg of Time, and it shows Lt. Col. Bryan McCoy outside the Palestine Hotel, moments after he pulled up in his Humvee. McCoy is on the phone, and the guy on the left, ...
The Grenade Picture
From my story…
McCoy, who has written a monograph on military leadership, “The Passion of Command,” understood the importance of the media. That was one reason he had agreed to let me and ten other unilateral journalists follow his battalion, which already had four embedded journalists. ...
The Map for Invading Baghdad
The final assault into central Baghdad was planned in a surprisingly ad-hoc manner. I had thought it would have been prepared in depth, with lots of intelligence and surveillance on hand, but instead it was devised on the outskirts of Baghdad, at the Diyala canal, by two majors, John Schaar ...
Journalists Outside the Frame
The hundreds of journalists at Firdos Square were rarely shown on TV or in photos; their influence on the toppling was obscured. But a Marine who was at Firdos shared with me a series of photos that show the journalist-saturated scene around the statue. The first two photos in the set ...
The Front Pages
If you want to see a selection of front pages the day after the toppling, click here.
The Mural of Saddam Hussein
Shortly before heading into central Baghdad on April 9, 2003, Lt. Col. Bryan McCoy joined a handful of his Marines who were taking a sledgehammer to a mural of Saddam Hussein at the military base where they had spent the night. Click here for a slideshow of my photos.
Toppled, the book
If you have an unlimited appetite for information, photos and trivia about the toppled statues of Saddam Hussein, there’s a website and book just for you–“Toppled” by Florian Gottke. My favorite photo ...
Photographer on First Tank Into Firdos
The Marines who were ordered to seize Firdos Square were not entirely sure how to get there, so they asked a photographer to show them the way. These screen shots, taken from a TV video of the first tank entering Firdos Square, show the photographer, Jan Grarup, on the tank’s turret.
Correction: ...