'I hoped our job was done'

NY Daily News ^ | April 10 2004 | CORKY SIEMASZKO

[knighthawk]

One year ago today, Cpl. Edward Chin climbed up an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein and into history when he draped a noose over the tyrant's head and marked the fall of Baghdad. The 24-year-old New Yorker remains convinced that America was right to oust Saddam - whether or not weapons of mass destruction are ever found. But with U.S. forces battling Iraqi rebels and taking heavy losses, Chin is troubled that the war that seemed to have been won when he stood atop the statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square shows no sign of ending.

"I was hoping that our part would be over when I was up there," Chin told the Daily News. "I knew that the situation would take a while to settle down. I didn't think it would still be going on."

As an indication of how unsettled things are, U.S. soldiers climbed a ladder in the same square yesterday to pull pictures of Shiite rebel leader Moqtada al-Sadr that had been hung on a sculpture.

The former Marine said he fears for the U.S. soldiers still fighting and thinks more are needed "to get the situation under control."

"It's a shame what's going on and, yeah, I'm worried," he said. "I have a few friends in the Marines who are still there. But we can't let the extremists bully us - we have to stay the course. Pulling out right now would definitely be the wrong thing to do."

A son of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Chin enlisted in the Marines in 1999 looking for adventure and college money so he could one day become an architect. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines and sent to Twenty-nine Palms, Calif.

After Christmas 2002, his unit got the call.

"We knew we would be a front-line unit, and as soon as we crossed into Iraq, we started fighting," Chin said. "We saw battles all the way to Baghdad."

But when they pulled into Firdos Square, Chin said they were greeted by smiling Iraqis chanting, "We love [President] Bush, we hate Saddam." "Some of them asked us for help in pulling down the statue," Chin said. "We gave them a sledgehammer."

When the growing crowd was unable to bring down the statue, the Marines provided a noose and gave Chin the honor of placing it around Saddam's neck.

"On the way up, my commanding officer gave me a flag from the Pentagon that survived the \[9/11\] attack," Chin said. "He said, 'Chin, show our colors, show our colors for the boys.' "

So Chin did as he was told - and dozens of television cameras broadcast it live.

At the Pentagon, there were loud gasps when Chin unfurled the flag. When U.S. soldiers raised the flag over the city of Umm Qasr two weeks earlier, Arab media called it proof the Americans had come as conquerors.

Chin said that if the Iraqis in the square were aghast at seeing the U.S. flag, he was not aware of it.

"Definitely nobody told me to take it down," he said. "We weren't doing it to show dominance. It was just 21 days of war, hardly any sleep, and we wanted to show our colors."

Seconds later, the statue was toppled. Several months after that, Chin, by then a sergeant, was back home with his wife and parents. He was awarded the American Legion's highest honor and got to toss a ceremonial first pitch at Shea Stadium last July.

"All of this hasn't really hit me," said Chin, now studying architecture at New York Technical College. "I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to reflect. Maybe one day I'll write a book."

[knighthawk]

Ping

[MNJohnnie]

Gee, funny how everything the vet says contridicts the headline and the spin the reporter is trying to put on Iraq isn't it?

[Demetrius Slaughter]

I have a lot of respect for this guy, Chin. He was a long way up there with not much to stand on while he was hooking that cable around the statue and while putting the flag over the face of Saddam. He would have badly hurt or killed if he had slipped and fallen from that height.