
"I'm 49, but I never lived a single day," said Yusuf Abed Kazim, a Baghdad imam who pounded the statue's pedestal with a sledgehammer. "Only now will I start living. That Saddam Hussein is a murderer and a criminal."
"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Bush," some of the looters shouted. An elderly man beat a portrait of Saddam with his shoe, while a younger man spat on the portrait.