Didn't you watch it on TV? It was around 8pm our time, 8am your time. First, there were maybe twenty people -- newspeople almost outnumbered them. Put on a bit of a show. It grew a bit. Around perhaps 50, mostly watching a few sharing a single hammer each taking a few swipes at the plinth. I switched off around the time the armoured vehicle appeared -- shucks, even at a moment like that the liberated couldn't bring down the thing themselves. Should have left it on. So Reuters reported it as "dozens", almost all others called it "scenes of jubilation". It was, in fact, pretty dismal. I recall watching the fall of the Berlin Wall -- now that was an outpouring of popular sentiment, no doubt about it. And it didn't require no tanks or armoured vehicles -- people brought it down out of sheer energy!
Later reports should raise anyone's doubt. There was the bit about the US flag being used to cover SH's head. Then that got taken down, and someone in the crowd produced a pre-1991 Iraqi flag, the one minus the "allahu akbar". Now tell me -- what spontaneous outpouring of sentiment, 12 years after the disappearance of the previous flag, would be able to produce an old flag right on cue?
There are other photos that are more moving. One in particular, of an older woman, all chadored, hitting a SH pix with her shoe. BBC site has an explanation -- sounds reasonable enough -- of the symbolism of the shoe. More importantly, there are by now many reports indicating the underlying sentiment -- good, you got rid of the guy, now don't take your time about getting lost. So it is, as it always has been -- some bitter-sweetness at seeing off SH, but concern about US plans and projects. Please, since you all are so much better placed, don't let Iraq off your radar -- as seems to have happened with Afghanistan. The correctness or otherwise of left assessment is not decided in the immediate outcome of the invasion which was never in doubt; it will be decided in the aftermath, over the next few years. (Did anyone seriously believe this was a Vietnam? If so, that's an insult to Vietnam and the memory of Vietnam -- however we may assess it today, that was a war of national liberation, and a popular one; Iraq was never going to be popular war of national defence).
A moment to swallow hard perhaps -- but if one has to swallow too hard, then we should examine our emotions on this thing as it belies our protestations that of course we knew that SH was one shit; also that despite protestations about death, we really wanted this thing to get strung out. I don't think the desire to see Washington get a bloody nose is worth the lives of Iraqis, although of course, if the left's assessment is right, there will still be a price to pay in the lives of Iraqis, especially those at the bottom. I also don't think the left should be getting worked up about the looting and so on -- other than what's happening in the south, where the looters are apparently Chalabi's boys! But keep it -- and next time, Americans get all outraged about looting, trot out the pictures and remind them of their celebration and justification of looting in Iraq (years of oppression, poverty, etc.)
Watch the unfolding story of the killing of the two clerics in Najaf. That might yet tell something about what's going to happen. There are two different versions in circulation. One has it that the crowd was going after al-Kaldar (or Kilidar) because he was part of SH's ministry of religion, and the ayatollah went to his assistance, and the crowd then got them both. Bit strange this, if the crowd were going for blood of SH cronies. The other has it that al-Kaldar was actually deputised by the ayatollah from London, and the crowd were followers of a rival ayatollah. That the ayatollah from London fired a gun, whether into the crowd or into the air is not clear, and the crowd lynched them both.