With Our Blood And With Our Spirit We Shall Die For You Sadddam!

In the main street a crowd of a thousand was holding up pictures of Saddam Hussein and chanting: ‘With our blood and with our spirit we shall die for you Saddam.’ The previous morning, the local Iraqi police had fired at demonstrators who were demanding the dismissal of the US-appointed police chief and wounded four of them. More protestors gathered and burned down the mayor’s office. The police–300 of them–fled to a nearby US base, where the American officers told them to go back or be sacked. The police refused, saying they would be killed if they did so … Saddam Hussein should not have been a hard act to follow. Iraqis know that he ruined their country with his disastrous wars against Iran and Kuwait. But in Baiji a clerk at the local registration office for births and deaths said he noticed that over the last couple of months parents of newborn babies had started to name them ‘Saddam’.