....what a large building looks like after it has been hit by a cruise missile? This first picture is of the main conference room, and theater, of the once powerful Baath party's main party house. It was their brothel away from home for most of them. This is the result of the explosion that started the war with Iraq, ground zero, the first shot. When President Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to surrender, 24 hours into the wait they had eyes on intel that most of the main players had gathered in the "house", so rather than waiting, they dropped the cruise missile on them, and then followed it with an air strike just to make sure. The cruise missile hit dead on, and buried approximately 85 members of the ruling party under all this rubble. I suspect a lot of this is conjecture on the part of the US military, but it's a good story, and you can't deny the devastation.
This next picture is of the "master suite" bath room in the party house. It belonged to one of Saddam's barbaric sons, who rumor tells had a tendency to pick a young thing from the brothel across the lake, and if she wasn't everything he wanted, she would be tortured, and then run through the wood chipper and fed to the fish in the lake. Incidentally, this entire house is in the middle of the lake.Now this next picture is of the building called "The Perfume Palace", located on Camp Slayer which is just south of us. This shot is taken from the Baath Party House, across the lake.
It's the premier place to live over here, with lakeshore trailers with water and plumbing. Kind of a mix of living at the IZ, yet in the relative safety of the Victory Base Complex. The palace gets it's name because it was the apartment complex of all of the Baath Party bigshots' mistresses, making it a large female dormitory to those that were good enough to not suffer the horrors of the Hussein brother's brutality.Now this picture with me in it has one of the more odd items in the background. They call it Flintstone Village, as it resembles the houses of Bedrock, and again, rumor has it
Saddam had it built as a place for the kids to play -- at a distance, but within sight. I'm standing on the balcony of the "Victory Over America Palace", which the French never got finished for Saddam, and of course we had to put a couple of JDAM bombs through it just to spoil the mediocre tile job. Lots of marble and mahogany, but these days it's all covered in rubble and dust, almost a half inch deep throughout.Sunday was a very hot day, you can probably see it in my face, as the temperatures were 128+, but we had water, shade, and a very leisurely walk up all the flights of stairs through all of the rubble. Not a single piece of glass survived, and it's all over the place. Click on the pictures if you'd like to see a whole lot more detail than shown in this blog.
That's what I did on my one day off this week. Then I went to work.
4 comments:
Those are awesome pics!!! I love the commentary too...the Perfume Palace is pretty. Is the inside of it still nice?
I wish there were such interesting things in Korea. There are palaces, but they are all the same, and as shrunken versions of Chinese palaces. Anything notable you remember here?
I remember the plumbing in the bars. The pipes were there, but they all dumped out onto the floors. As you might imagine, that didn't make for a good bathroom experience. One not soon forgotten.
I remember the little parks all over, and in the city of Taegue, the intersection malls. This is where you go down under the streets rather than crossing (so traffic doesn't have to wait for pedestrians) and they have 20 stores or such underground.
The lights of Itae Wan.
The burial mounds along the road.
The cold weather, and the sticky mud.
I remember the train, where we had assigned seats, but ended up having to stand for a 3 hour train ride because they wouldn't get out of our assigned seats. It was crowded, and everyone around us was slurping noodles and kimchee.
I remember the slot toilets in the fancy bank retreat building where we were allowed to take a shower after our field exercise, outside of the town of Pyongtaek.
Let's not forget the street vendors, where you had to haggle for everything, or get taken. I still have and use the Bose speakers I bought there in 1989, as well as the silk comforter which Angie dislikes.
Soju. Most never remember that, but I did because I was the designated brother's keeper for our little group.
Frankie:
You have to have high-level clearances to go in that building these days, as it's home to several agencies that prefer to remain anonymous. Many of the nicer places can make similar claims.
In other words, I don't have a clue...
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