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Comment by tylerkahn | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone explain what is meant by this:

> During the Iraq war, reporters informed us that a mob of jubilant Iraqis toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. Never mind that there were so few local people trying to pull the statue down that they needed the help of a U.S. military crane.

Here's an (edited) video of the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snyz8sn2-z4

I'm 90% certain I watched this live at home in the morning when I was home sick from school. There were a smattering of people trying to bring it down and then the crowd got bigger and then the U.S. crane came in and helped. This happened over the course of an hour or two. I remember thinking it was cool that U.S. military helped out.

Where does this claim of the false narrative come in?

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Even the idea that Iraqis tried to topple the statue at all (and then the US "helped") is highly controversial. (That's how CNN portrayed it at the time.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firdos_Square_statue_destructi...

If you look how the image is framed (especially in the Fox coverage) the framing cuts out or de-emphasizes the vehicle while emphasizing the (quite small) Iraqi crowd. The accompanying commentary is all about the crowd throwing stuff (they seem to be standing around, mostly). And the later coverage definitely emphasized the Iraqis pulling down the status with US help, not (say) the US pulling down the statue while Iraqi's mostly watched.

-- it was an unnamed Marine colonel, not Iraqi civilians who had decided to topple the statue; and that a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team then used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist and made it all appear spontaneous and Iraqi-inspired --

The propaganda machine around this event is disgusting.

Take down Saddam's stature by all means, but do not fake it, especially to your own electorate.

I don't remember 100% clearly but I think photos published of the event were carefully framed to make it look like a huge crowd of Iraqis and few if any Americans

Yup, that's what I remember too. Seeing the uncropped version of the photo a few days later and thinking "huh wow, propaganda much?" :)

"Mob" != "smattering", perhaps. It makes it seem like there was more Iraqi popular opposition than was actually occurring.

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