As Saddam's regime crumbles, so does his image

NASIRIYAH, Iraq -- He made an icon out of himself over the years, systematically imposing his face on murals, statues, endless portraits across the land he ruled. Now, as Saddam Hussein's regime crumbles, the Iraqi president's images are falling, too.

The instigators are twofold: U.S. military forces and, at times, Iraqis themselves. Sometimes they do it together.

"Every time we tear down a picture of Saddam, they cheer," said Peter McAleer, the commander of Echo Company of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The 15th is helping to hold Nasiriyah, a key crossroads for supplies and military personnel heading north to Baghdad.

Just a few days ago in Nasiriyah, a huge statue of Saddam gazed down upon motorists entering town. Now, after a two-week battle won by invading U.S.-led forces, the enormous concrete pedestal stands empty.

Everywhere in this city, U.S. Marines are pulling down images of Saddam, with residents often joining in. Across Iraq, it's the same story: Sweeps across the landscape by the U.S.-led coalition are followed by attacks on his unremittingly ubiquitous face.

U.S. forces have used guns and spray paint, hatchets and fresh coats of latex and even explosives.

In one case, it took only a simple renaming: American forces did that last week when they took over Saddam International Airport.

In the port of Umm Qasr, just across the border from Kuwait, tiled portraits of Saddam are coming down piecemeal -- apparently at the hands of Iraqis -- and the main picture welcoming drivers to town has been painted over. Elsewhere in southern Iraq, Marines have hauled down metal Saddam billboards by rigging winch chains to them and pulling.

In the north, in Kurdish-controlled Qadir Karam, just abandoned by Iraqi forces, a picture of Saddam waving heartily to his people has a red X scrawled through it. And on Monday, in downtown Baghdad, U.S. forces felled a statue of Saddam in his beret, leaving it lying in a concrete gutter, face down like an inebriated college student.

Such efforts are not simply exuberance, military planners say. They're part of good strategy.

"Any picture or effigy of Saddam Hussein we have viewed as a legitimate target in order to achieve a psychological effect, basically to encourage the local people that this figure of their oppression is no longer the great strength he was," Col. Chris Vernon, spokesman for British forces, said Tuesday in Kuwait City.

Saddam has encouraged, even ordered his legend-building over the years and made sure nothing got in the way. Insulting the president, for example, has been a capital offense in Iraq.

But he has also denied he is the engineer of his own myth.

Speaking to Kuwaiti reporters in 1983, when his personality cult was already in full swing, Saddam insisted the cult wasn't of his own making -- proving, he asserted, that it was for real.

"If the case we are talking about were not truly genuine, people would not tolerate it for more than six months at most, after which it would be thrown overboard," he said at the time.

Today, by all indications, it is being thrown overboard.

"You use your military means to achieve a psychological effect," said Vernon, the British spokesman. "If you can decapitate the head and the brains of any organization, you're 90 percent of the way there."