Hmm. Here's
an eyewitness account of Mosul that day:
...After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, on the day coalition forces entered Baghdad—April 9—the principal of our school told us to go home. When I arrived at the house, which is about 20 minutes from my school, my mother and father were sitting in front of the television, watching the crowds that had gathered around the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in Baghdad. American soldiers tied chains to the statue to pull it down, and we saw people beating pictures of Saddam. My father, my mother and my younger brothers sat in silence. Minutes later I noticed a strange smile on my father’s face: The tyrant had fallen.
So far everything was going on normally in our neighborhood. I went out into the street with my friend. There were still armed men in uniform on the street: the local Ba’th party leader and youths with medium and light weapons. They were distributing weapons to checkpoints around the neighborhood from a truck filled with weapons, where a long queue of people waited to get guns.
The next day—April 10, a Friday—I was standing with my friends near the mosque. Armed men in civilian clothes and military uniforms came to see what was happening. The preacher began his sermon; it was about the duty to defend Iraq against the American occupation. “God save the herdsman and the herd, and God save the president of the republic!” he said. U.S. forces were not yet in Mosul at that time. A few minutes after the start of the sermon, two vehicles arrived, bringing American soldiers and a sheikh in Arab dress. Later, I learned that the sheikh was Salim Mulla Allo, a notorious figure in Mosul politics. Within a matter of seconds, the preacher who had been calling for the defense of Iraq was now crying, “Today is the day of freedom! Injustice has fallen and righteousness has triumphed! The tyrannical rule of Saddam and his Ba’thist regime have fallen!” And cries of “God is great!” rang out everywhere.
