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Around 6.50pm the M-88 drove away from the statue, dragging it face forward with the chain around its neck. Slowly, the bronze bent forward at the knee and ankle, Saddam's huge figure bobbing for a few seconds in a horizontal position as the modest crowd of Iraqis whistled and cheered. Finally, the statue snapped off its plinth, leaving its feet behind. Iraqis ran forward, jumped on it and danced. It was crushed to pieces.
下午6点50分左右，M-88装甲车驶离雕像，挂着铁链，脸朝前拖着雕像。慢慢地，铜像的膝盖和脚踝处向前弯了弯，萨达姆的巨大身躯在水平位置上下浮动了几秒钟，而为数不多的一群伊拉克人吹起了口哨，欢呼起来。最后，雕像折断了底座，把脚留在了后面。伊拉克人向前跑，在上面跳来跳去。它被压成了碎片。
That morning, photojournalist Patrick Baz had been in Saddam City (a neighbourhood of Baghdad later renamed Sadr City). There, he had seen an Iraqi man who had pulled down a different Saddam statue. It was tied to the back of his car with a cable.
那天早上，摄影记者帕特里克·巴兹来到了萨达姆城(巴格达的一个街区，后来改名为萨德尔城)。在那里，他看到一个伊拉克人将缆绳绑在他的车后面，推倒了另一座萨达姆雕像。
Whenever the man saw a group of people, he would stop. They would all crowd around Saddam and start hitting him with their shoes. (Shoes are considered dirty in the Middle East: it is rude to show someone the soles of your shoes, and a terrible insult to hit them with a shoe. In 2008, an Iraqi journalist would make international news when he threw a shoe at George W Bush.)
每当这个人看到一群人时他就会停下来。他们会围着萨达姆，开始用鞋子打他。(在中东，鞋子被认为是脏的：让别人看你的鞋底是不礼貌的，用鞋子打别人是一种严重的侮辱。2008年，一名伊拉克记者向乔治·W·布什扔鞋，这件事成了国际新闻。)
"The image was all the more strong because there wasn't an American soldier in sight," Baz later wrote. "Just the locals expressing what they felt about their country's long-term dictator." Baz hurried back to his room at the Palestine Hotel to send his pictures to his editors, then heard a commotion outside and witnessed the Firdos Square toppling. Only one of the Saddam topplings made the front pages, and it was not the one that Iraqis had done for themselves. There was a real story here about pulling down a statue in Saddam City. The world's media preferred the simulation in Firdos Square.
巴兹后来写道：“因为视野里没有一名美国士兵，所以画面更加强烈。只是当地人表达了他们对长期担任了这个国家的独裁者的感受。”巴兹急忙回到他在巴勒斯坦酒店的房间，把他的照片发给他的编辑，然后听到外面的骚动，并目睹了佛多斯广场的倒塌。在推翻萨达姆政权的事件中，只有一次事件登上了头版，而且不是伊拉克人为自己所做的。这里有一个关于推倒萨达姆城一座雕像的真实故事。世界媒体更喜欢佛多斯广场的模拟。
As two hours of non-stop coverage of Firdos Square was beamed around the world that night, the news networks desperately wanted it to have a meaning. Wolf Blitzer of CNN described the footage as "the image that sums up the day and, in many ways, the war itself". Over on Fox, the anchors agreed. "This transcends anything I've ever seen," said Brit Hume. His colleague agreed: "The important story of the day is this historic shot you are looking at, a noose around the neck of Saddam, put there by the people of Baghdad." But it was an American rope, put there by American soldiers.
当天晚上，随着对佛多斯广场长达两个小时的不间断报道传遍全球，新闻网络迫切希望它有意义。美国有线电视新闻网(CNN)的沃尔夫·布利泽将这段视频描述为“总结了这一天，在很多方面，也总结了战争本身”。在福克斯，主持人同意了。布里特·休姆说：“这超越了我所见过的任何东西。”他的同事对此表示赞同：“今天最重要的新闻就是你看到的这一具历史意义的枪决，这是巴格达人民套在萨达姆脖子上的绞索。”但那是美国的绳子，是美国士兵放上去的。
