--- title: 10 Years Later: Bobby Ghosh Looks Back at Baghdad | TIME description: TIME International Editor Bobby Ghosh talks about witnessing a dangerous misstep at Saddam's Presidential Palace and how it foreshadowed things to come. canonical: https://time.com/video/kqQ05NE1/ og:title: 10 Years Later: Bobby Ghosh Looks Back at Baghdad og:description: TIME International Editor Bobby Ghosh talks about witnessing a dangerous misstep at Saddam's Presidential Palace and how it foreshadowed things to come. og:url: https://time.com/video/kqQ05NE1/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/kqQ05NE1/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Years Later: Bobby Ghosh Looks Back at Baghdad twitter:description: TIME International Editor Bobby Ghosh talks about witnessing a dangerous misstep at Saddam's Presidential Palace and how it foreshadowed things to come. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/kqQ05NE1/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Years Later: Bobby Ghosh Looks Back at Baghdad > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Years Later: Bobby Ghosh Looks Back at Baghdad [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Years Later: Bobby Ghosh Looks Back at Baghdad](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/kqQ05NE1.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2013-04-10. TIME International Editor Bobby Ghosh talks about witnessing a dangerous misstep at Saddam's Presidential Palace and how it foreshadowed things to come._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:32 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Bobby Ghosh on India's and Indonesia's Elections](/video/TqQYPygW/) ### Bobby Ghosh on India's and Indonesia's Elections [Healing Bobby \(Trailer\)](/video/j4g8fmsc/) ### Healing Bobby (Trailer) [Bobby Ghosh: Lessons From the Bangladeshi Factory Tragedies](/video/4oGcDjNY/) ### Bobby Ghosh: Lessons From the Bangladeshi Factory Tragedies --- ## Transcript Yes, he's coming down. He's beginning to bow. He's over. Wow, what a sight, fantastic! Ten years ago, in Baghdad's Firdos Square, also known as Paradise Square, an American tank brought a chain up to the statue of Saddam Hussein, and brought it down. And that was a seminal moment. It marked the end Of the principle fighting in the Iraq War. And from that moment onwards Iraq, Baghdad was liberated and Iraq was, at least, notionally, free. A day after that event, I found myself in Saddam's main palace in Baghdad, where a group of American marines was going through Papers and files and the office. Marie was in Saddam's office going through his things along with a translator who was probably Kurdish. And he looked at one of Saddam's flags which was right next to his table in fact it was this flag. And as you'll see there's Arabic lettering in the middle of it and it says in Arabic [ FOREIGN ] God is great. And the Marine obviously didn't read Arabic and he asked his translator what it said. And the Turkish translator said. 'It says Saddam Hussein'. Which was not true. And the Marine men takes flag and runs out to the. To the porch of the palace where there are 100s of Iraqi's have gathered. And they're are actually cheering the American's. It was at this point, and he holds a flag up and he takes out a zippo lighter, and he's about to light it up, and the crowd was just horrified at the sight of this. They, they couldn't understand why he was doing this. Fortunately I was standing right next to him and I was able to grab his hand and say, what, why are you doing this? And he said well, my translator says he said, I'm Saddam Hussein and so I'm gonna put in fire and they'll like it. And I had to explain to him that, that was not what the flag said and in fact if he set it on fire he would probably set off a riot right there in the palace. So he gave the flag to me and says can you explain it to these people and he runs inside. And now this, this crowd, this very angry crowd is approaching me. And my translator fortunately was able to shout above the din and explain to everybody what had happened. And I took the flag, and I gave it to an, an old man who was in the front of the crowd. He looked like a tribal sheikh. And I said, look, this was a mistake, this was a, this was a well intentioned mistake. You should have the flag. And he said to me, no, you, you saved our flag. And so you get to keep it. And so, this is a, a very important momento for me. That incident was also for me a sign for things to come over the next several months because often absence of understanding from both sides, American as well as Iraqi, tremendous mistakes were made, in Baghdad, in Iraq. And those mistakes, like the, like the firing of entire Iraqi army, like the. A criminalization of the Ba'ath party, like leaving the borders unattended. These mistakes would have enormous consequence over the next five or six years of Iraq's history. It would let in AlQaeda, it would strengthen the insurgency, and it would cost Americans and Iraqis a huge amount of money as well as an enormous amount of blood. Ten years later Iraq is still today struggling with some of the consequences of misunderstandings like the one that nearly lead to this flag being burned. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Years Later: Bobby Ghosh Looks Back at Baghdad","description":"TIME International Editor Bobby Ghosh talks about witnessing a dangerous misstep at Saddam's Presidential Palace and how it foreshadowed things to come.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/kqQ05NE1/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-04-10T14:50:55.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/kqQ05NE1.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/kqQ05NE1/","duration":"PT3M23S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/kqQ05NE1/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```