A group of maybe 20 Iraqis came walking down the street in the afternoon, the cameras picking them up as they chanted anti-Hussein yells and passed through the Marine perimeter. They walked around a little and then milled. A couple of them went over to the statue. They started throwing shoes at it, trying to hit it with their shoes and insult it.
They started trying to climb on each other's shoulders to get up. More of the group came over and started trying to help them up. Eventually one and then another made it up to the top of the concrete upon which the statue stood. All of this took 20-25 minutes.
More people gathered at the base. More shoes were thrown. A ladder appeared after a few minutes. Then a rope. They took the ladder up to the top of the concrete and used it to get the rope up over the statues shoulders. It was dangerous work and I commented to my wife how bad it would be if one fell to his death. It took several minutes of swinging one end of the rope to get it around the statue's neck. Then it was obvious that the rope was too short. It barely reached the ground. The two men climbed down. All of this took another 20 minutes or so.
The crowd had grown larger. Looked like a couple of hundred. The guys went and talked to some US soldiers. Maybe 10 minutes later the M88 pulled up and then they hooked a chain to the rope and started to back up tp pull it over. Everyone thought this was it. But that first attempt failed as the rope and chain came loose. Another 20 or more minutes had now passed. Maybe 30.
The M88 came back and lifted it's hoist all the way up. A Marine climbed up to attach a heavy chain around the neck. They then went through the whole US Flag - Iraqi Flag thing. All of this too another half hour or so and then they finally pulled it down to the cheers of hundreds of Iraqis. It didn't come all the way down and took another few minutes to finally pull it loose from its anchorings. The Iraqis immediately scrambled all over it, dancing on it.
Later, a pickup tied a chain to the thing and drug it off ... but it pulled its head off. Several Iraqis then dragged the head away with a chain, some Iraqis taking turns sitting on it.
It was a good 2-3 hour affair and was obviously spontaneous, irrespective of what the slanted media wants to try and turn it into, or how much they want to abett our enemies. Jennings disgusts me with his unveiled attempts to nay-say and bad mouth what is clearly a monumnetal point in history and success for liberty loving people everywhere. I saw it and will never forget it.
If you see the front page photo of the statue crashing down on USA Today, you will see that the Marine who secured the chain around the neck of the statue also went out of his way to tie the Iraqi's now useless manila rope securely to the chain. The result was that the Iraqi's rope was purposely included and not discarded.
The pundits are psycho-analysing every action of that 20-something Marine but only those actions that can have nefarious interpretations are publicized by them.