Firdos Square, Baghdad

A statue toppled in front of the press hotel

On the afternoon of 9 April 2003, three weeks into the US-led invasion of Iraq, a column of US Marines from Task Force 2-7 of the 1st Marine Division entered Firdos Square in central Baghdad, 600 metres east of the Tigris River.

The square was directly in front of the Palestine Hotel — the building housing most of the foreign journalists covering the war, including the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, the BBC, and Al Jazeera.

The Marines had not intended to topple the 12-metre statue of Saddam Hussein at the centre of the square.

A small group of Iraqi civilians had begun trying to demolish the statue themselves with sledgehammers. The Marines, sensing a media opportunity, joined in. A US Marine M88 Hercules armoured recovery vehicle was brought up to attach a chain to the statue's neck and pull it down.

Six minutes of staged liberation

The toppling itself, from chain attachment to statue collapse, took six minutes.

The video footage broadcast live by CNN and Fox News showed what appeared to be a spontaneous celebration of liberation by jubilant Iraqi civilians.

Subsequent analysis of photographs from different angles showed something more complicated. The square was largely empty during the toppling. The apparent crowd of celebrating Iraqis numbered perhaps 100 people, gathered in a tight area immediately around the statue. The wider square, visible in side-on photographs, was almost deserted.

The Marines had taped off the perimeter to keep journalists and observers contained. A small Iraqi flag was first draped over the statue's head. An American flag was then placed over it. Both flags were then removed (in response to direct orders from Central Command, which had concerns about the appearance of US occupation symbolism).

The statue toppled at 18:50 local time.

What the toppling meant for the war

The Firdos Square footage was the visual climax of the US "shock and awe" phase of the war and was used as proof that the campaign had been successful.

President Bush addressed the nation from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003 — three weeks after the statue's toppling — under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished" and declaring the end of major combat operations.

The Mission Accomplished moment became one of the most-mocked political miscalculations of the early 2000s. Major combat operations in Iraq continued for another eight and a half years through the insurgency, the sectarian civil war (2006–2008), and the formal withdrawal of US combat forces on 18 December 2011.

The total number of Iraqi civilian deaths over the period 2003–2011 is estimated at between 175 000 and 600 000, depending on methodology.

An empty plinth

Firdos Square was redesigned after the war.

The statue's plinth — which had carried Saddam — was left empty for several years, becoming a contested site for various political messages. A new sculpture, of an Iraqi family and a crescent moon (the Liberty Monument by the sculptor Basim Hamdi), was installed in 2003 but was widely criticised as artistically inferior. It was eventually removed in 2009.

The plinth has since stood mostly empty.

Saddam's statue itself was dismembered immediately after the toppling. The head was dragged through the streets and the body broken into pieces by the small crowd of Iraqis who had gathered. A fragment of the statue's bronze, donated by the US Marines, is on display at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island in South Carolina.