Stuff from my Studio #12: Saddam’s Marble!

Many of the items in my studio are souvenirs from my travels here and there, and this ubiquitous piece of broken marble is one of the oddest of the bunch.

Back in 2009 I was honored to be one of ten cartoonists who traveled to Iraq and Kuwait with the USO to visit U.S. troops stationed there. One of the stops we made on the tour was Baghdad, where we drew for military personnel at various locations in the Victory Base Complex. Among the places in the VBC we visited was Camp Slayer, which contained Saddam Hussein’s very optimistically named “Victory Over America” palace. Saddam ordered this palace and the adjacent “Victory Over Iran” palace constructed to celebrate his “victory” during the Gulf War in 1991… he remembered that war differently than most of the rest of the world I guess. I should come as no surprise that the palace was never completed because of economic sanctions and, oh yeah, a bunch of bombs being dropped on the site. Here are some pics of what it looked like in 2009:

Anyway, we were told not to take anything away from the palace grounds, so I absolutely did not pick up this piece of marble that was not part of the flooring of the “Victory Over America” palace that was not pulverized by a bomb strike, but rather found it along the side of the road when we got out to pee in the middle of the desert miles away from there.