Saddam Hussain's bronze statue buttock 'hidden in Derby'

The buttock from the famous bronze statue of Saddam Hussain has reportedly been hidden in a secret location in Derby.

Ex-SAS soldier Nigel Ely, 52, picked up the 2ft piece of the statue after it was hauled down in April 2003, Derby Telegraph reports.

Ely put the object up for auction in October but it failed to meet its £250,000 reserve. He then signed it over to Derby-based war relic dealer Trebletap, but the Iraqi authorities have since lobbied for its return as a “cultural antiquity”.”I’m quite cheesed off about it, really,” he told the newspaper. “Why the Iraqi government are wanting it back now, I don’t know.

“In my point of view, until we can find the legal position of the item, then hiding it is the best thing to do.”

Jim Thorpe, director of Trebletap added: “As far as Trebletap is concerned, the item is designated for sale to support a very deserving military charity where the funds go directly to the support of injured servicemen who need help now.”

via Saddam Hussain’s bronze statue buttock ‘hidden in Derby’ – Odd News – Digital Spy.

Why would they want it back? Because they (Iraqis) never pulled it down. Ely, like most of the rest of the world, probably doesn’t know the entire statue toppling thing was a psychological operation staged by our government.

… Baghdad fell to forces led by the United States. But according to an oft-forgotten L.A. Times report, the crystallizing moment — when a statue of Saddam Hussein came down in Baghdad — was not the spontaneous event it appeared to be. …

And according to this interview with the psy-ops commander, there were Iraqis milling around the statue, and in fact, had been beating it with sledgehammers and apparently thinking about trying to bring it down, but it was a huge statue and they had no way to do that. So the Marines came up with the idea of bringing in a big recovery vehicle, like a wrecker, and trying to bring it down that way.

But the psychological operations commander noticed that the Marines had put an American flag on the statue and he thought that was a terrible idea, because it looked like an occupation and he didn’t want – the psychological ops didn’t want that, so they replaced it with an Iraqi flag, hooked a cable up to it and started pulling it down.

But somebody had the bright idea of getting a bunch of Iraqis and a lot of kids and pile them on the wrecker to make it look like a spontaneous Iraqi event, rather than, you know, the Marines sort of stage-managing this entire dramatic fall of the statue. …

- via npr.org

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