Iraqi protesters burn George Bush effigy where Saddam Hussein statue once stood
The crowd of thousands was protesting plans to keep American troops in Iraq through 2011.
Reporting from Baghdad — At the same spot where U.S. forces helped Iraqis topple a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, protesters today tore down an effigy of President Bush and set it afire in a protest over plans to keep American troops in Iraq through 2011.
Demonstrators began arriving at central Baghdad's Firdos Square just after sunrise, some having walked hours across the capital. Most came from Sadr City, the stronghold of the man who called for the gathering, Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr.
Iraqi army snipers perched on rooftops along the broad avenues leading to the square, a public gathering spot in the middle of a traffic roundabout decorated with fountains and greenery. The effigy of Bush, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, dangled for hours as the crowd, which stretched for several city blocks, knelt in prayer and listened to clerics denounce the Status of Forces Agreement.
The pact, which is expected to be voted on in Iraqi's parliament next week, sets a Dec. 31, 2011 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and requires American combat troops to withdraw from Iraqi cities, towns and villages by the end of next June. But people interviewed in the crowd insisted the pact did not contain any withdrawal deadlines. Others said that whatever the pact said, they did not trust the U.S. or Iraqi governments to live up to it.
"They want to keep extending and extending," Bassim Hamoud, dressed in a lavender shirt and pressed beige trousers, said as he prepared to pass one of the Iraqi army checkpoints set up on the edge of the rally. "If there was a concrete time limit, we would go for it."
Asked what he wanted that time limit to be for a U.S. withdrawal, Hamoud replied, "We want them to leave today."
Protesters' comments reflected both the lack of knowledge of the pact and the distrust many Iraqis feel toward the Americans and the Iraqi government as a result of unmet promises since the U.S.-led invasion. At the time of the Hussein statue's toppling, most Iraqis were not expecting that nearly six years down the line, they still would be living in a city with spotty electricity, sewage running through the streets of their neighborhoods, military checkpoints choking traffic and bombs going off regularly.
Loyalists of hard-line anti-U.S. leaders such as Sadr say if the Americans left, the violence would decrease and Iraqis would be able to fix their own problems. As long as the United States has forces here, they say, Iraq never will be sovereign.
