Truth in America

Days after the invasion of Iraq, viewers around the world witnessed one of the most striking images during the war. A large assembly of Iraqi men banded together to pull down a statue of their long-time dictator, Saddam Hussein.

In his book, Frank Rich asks, what didn't the cameras capture?

He responds: It was a "fictional reality" because it was constantly said on television it was like the falling of the Berlin wall. But the Americans didn't help the fall of the Berlin wall— the Berliners did it themselves. This was actually a fairly small organized crowd with American help that took down one statue. And the way it was framed by TV, it often looked like it was making true what Vice President Cheney had said— that we were being greeted as liberators. But actually it was a small group of people and indicative of nothing. Even while the statue was falling—which is a good thing, to knock down a statue of Saddam—elsewhere, not seen on TV, there were signs of the insurgency and unrest in Baghdad that would later haunt us.