Abu Ghraib

I went on a tour of one of Sadaam's Palaces on Abu Ghraib now known as Camp Slayer, which is an Army base. In the day it was the Iraq equivalant to Camp David in the US. The palace does not look very good for a couple reasons, one it was still under construction, but mostly complete, and two because construction on it was stopped when the US dropped 2 JDAMs on it in 2003. It is known as "Victory over America" and he was building it in celebration of his "victory" over the US in the Gulf War in the 90's. I will try not to include too much history and mostly pictures. I just figured you should have some background to know what you are looking at. Also I wasn't planning on going today, I was planning to go in a week or two, which I still will, so I didn't get a lot of pictures, so I will get more when I go back. Just FYI.

You can see the damage. The cranes belong to a French construction company that was contracted to build it. The US offered to let them come get them. Instead they said we should pay for them. We didn't pay, and they didn't get them. Oh Well.

This is inside the grand ballroom, which is the size of a football field, literally. The background is where one of the JDAMs punched through. The white spots is all the dust in the air. Sorry.

I am standing on one of the balcony's outside the grand ballroom. The thing in the background is called "Flintstone Village" which I will say more about later. All the water is a man made lake. They dug out all the dirt, then used water from Baghdad's water supply to fill them, causing a drought.


I am standing on top of the palace here. You can see more of the lake and other buildings in the background. The one you can only see the top of by my elbow is his Mother-in-law's house. The big building in the background is called the Perfume Palace, and use to be a Brothel for the Ba'ath Party members.

Here is another angle from the roof. You can see more of the lakes. The building at the end of the road behind me is Sadaam's son's Uday's house, or at least was. The building behind that that looks like it is missing a corner on the left side is the Ba'ath Party House, where they had a lot of the Baath Party meetings and the such as. You can see a lot of little houses out on the lake. Those are the Ba'ath Party members "love shacks". The believed that anything done over water was not a sin. So they did things from Adultary to murder and figured it was okay. The hill of dirt in the background was one of the ones created by the dirt removed from the lakes. I think this particular one was actually built on top of a local cemetary, because Sadaam was just that nice of a guy and figured he needed to put the dirt somewhere.


Here is a picture of me at the "Flintstone house" with the palace in the background. The Flinstone house was a huge place (I guess similar to Toon town at disney land) that he had built for his grandkids after he had their dads killed. I guess the Flintsones was one of his favorite cartoons and so it is suppose to be built after that, being all stone and such. Hit has tons of rooms, bathrooms, kitchens etc, and they would basically drop the kids off there to play, leaving them with servants why they did there non sinning and such. It looks like it use to be really cool, but is some what in ruins now.

This is a self portrait inside one of the many rooms of the flintstone house. As you can see, our good Army friends have contributed to the destruction with all their lovely grafeety. Morons!

Here is another one of me inside the Flintstone house. This is one of the bigger rooms.

This is the Ba'ath House from the front. The right corner which is pretty much destroyed use to be a confrence room where they met, so we thought. They later learned (while clearing the room) that it was a Theatre room, where the meeting was actually them watching a movie. Pretty Woman, was in the projector.. The day we first attacked Iraq, this was the first thing hit. It was struck with a Tomahawk Missle curtesy of the US Air Force. At the time there was aproxamatly 200 to 250 people in the room. About 50 of the bodies were recovered after. The rest were all buried/incinerated due to the blast. They later learned that they missed Sadaam by about 15 minutes. The Army refers to this room as the Tomahawk room.

Here is a picture inside the Tomahawk room, or what is left of it. They say cadaver dogs still go crazy even now, six years later, when they take them in this room.

I know, another wonderful self portrait! The "wall" behind me is not really a wall. It use to be the ceiling in this hallway until a JDAM hit it. I guess the JDAM was meant for the actual conference room but missed. I think it had the same effect though.

And this is one of the last remaining murals of Sadaam. I don't think he was this big in real life.
Hope you enjoyed. If I get some more good/interesting ones next time I go, I will post them too.