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#5 in a series from livingstonemusic.net

'Statue crowd egged me on' says marine.

The US marine who draped an American flag over a giant statue of Saddam Hussein said he was "egged on" by local people.

Millions around the world saw Corporal Edward Chin, 23, place the Stars and Stripes on the head of the 40-foot structure in central Baghdad on Wednesday.

Moments later the statue was pulled down by an American military vehicle and destroyed by a small crowd of Iraqis, who were wrongly described by the world's media of being in their thousands.

Corporal Chin told CNN that the flag incident "was a symbol that we were here to free the people. The crowd were egging us on. They were very happy to see what we were doing".

His action brought audible gasps in the Pentagon which was keen that US forces should not appear as occupiers, and the flag was quickly taken down and replaced with a pre-Gulf War Iraqi flag.

Many Arab commentators said the image had damaged America's claim to be liberators. One analyst on Abu Dhabi television said some Iraqis looked on with "disgust" when the US flag was raised.

Corporal Chin said the plan had always been to only keep the US flag up for a few seconds. "We took it down after a brief moment and put their flag up to symbolise that we were here to free their country and give it back to the people."

The US flag used to cover Saddam's head was recovered from the Pentagon during the September 11 attacks.

Now THAT is symbolism. Did they really bring a flag rescued from the Depstember 11th attacks? If they did, then that is one powerful use of symbolism. Now, all we have to do is decode that powerful message sent out to not only Saddam Hussein's regime, but to the entire world.

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