{"id":2937,"date":"2009-02-12T20:30:21","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T20:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=2937"},"modified":"2009-02-12T22:24:51","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T22:24:51","slug":"story-baghdad-april-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2009\/02\/story-baghdad-april-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"A story from Baghdad, April 2003"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PalestineA<\/span>n Iraqi journalist friend told me again today a story he has told me several times before.<\/p>\n

It features, so he says, in an upcoming movie<\/a>, so I don’t think I’m breaking any confidences sharing it.<\/p>\n

It was April 2003. Saddam’s statue had fallen in Firdos Square and my friend was hanging around the M\u00e9ridien<\/a> hotel in Baghdad<\/strong>, where the Marines were busy setting up base.<\/p>\n

He saw three Iraqi Army officers – a couple of generals and a colonel – go into the hotel. Bizarrely, the men were carrying their degree certificates to prove who they were.<\/p>\n

A couple of hours later they came out again. Furious. Humiliated.<\/p>\n

My friend explained that he was a journalist, working for an English-language paper. He asked them what happened.<\/p>\n

They had tried to meet with senior US officers. They had been made to wait, and then they had been dismissed. They had met no one.<\/p>\n

They were important men – proud men – but in the captured city, no one inside the makeshift Marine HQ had realised how important. Or how proud. Or what violence injured pride could unleash.<\/p>\n

Now, outside, they stopped to speak to the curious young Iraqi from the foreign newspaper.<\/p>\n

“Tell your people we didn’t fight because we didn’t want to destroy our city. Tell them the real war starts now.”<\/p>\n

Who knows if it makes the cut? And there’s a better story that follows that one. But that’s for him to tell when all the pieces are in place.<\/p>\n

IMAGE: Hotel Palestine, central Baghdad, Iraq by jamesdale10<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Iraqi journalist friend told me again today a story he has told me several times before. It features, so he says, in an upcoming movie, so I don’t think I’m breaking any confidences sharing it. It was April 2003. Saddam’s statue had fallen in Firdos Square and my friend was hanging around the M\u00e9ridien […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2937"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2943,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937\/revisions\/2943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}