<SPAN class=textcopy>AMERICAN forces, with about 70 tanks and armoured personnel carriers, stormed the Republican Guard headquarters in the Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris before moving on to al-Sijoud, or the New Presidential Palace, Saddams official residence in the al-Khark sector of Baghdad.
The newer edifice, sand- coloured and topped with a blue-and-white dome of ceramic tiles, had already been scythed in half during three weeks of sustained bombardment. The third and fourth floors were gone before the troops arrived, as was the rooftop swimming pool. In the two remaining floors they found a complex of bedrooms, each with ornate boxes of complimentary stationery and multiple televisions, like a particularly horrible and expensive hotel. Beneath these is said to be a German-built bunker with 11 rooms. In a respite from the fighting, the troops lounged, eating lunch among palm trees and ornate gardens, and then took photographs of each other, as if outside Versailles or Buckingham Palace. In the courtyard, the fountains and pools were dry, but water still coughed from the ornate sinks in the over-decorated bathrooms. Labels still dangled from gold door handles, declaring them to be authentically 24-carat plated. There was even a gold-plated lavatory brush. The rooms were covered in a thick layer of dust and suffused with the stench of sulphur and smoke, but the sight of two anonymous GIs staring up at a lightless chandelier the size of a Bradley fighting vehicle may be one of the wars enduring images. Saddam, it was said, had stripped ancient sites to provide marble and alabaster for his palaces, and it seemed oddly appropriate that looters had got there first: much of the interior had been stripped, except the gold fittings, strange, luxury relics of a doomed regime. Saddams dozens of sprawling presidential palaces were the reflections of his might: architectural statements of pure power, luxury resorts but also intelligence headquarters, military barracks and, beneath the floors of the palace, prisons and torture chambers. They were also potential hiding places for weapons of mass destruction. The palaces, comprising hundreds of buildings, cover an estimated 12 square miles of Iraq. Saddam is believed to have spent more then $2 billion (£1.3 billion) since 1991 on his opulent fortresses. The architects who built them were threatened with death if they revealed their contents: at least one vanished after describing a palace to friends.
Hmmm wondering if bleach is harmful when cleaning toilets with gold lavetory brushes???
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