WASHINGTON, April 8, 2006 – Three years ago, on live television, the world watched Saddam Hussein's statue fall in downtown Baghdad, but a Marine who saw it firsthand believes that image doesn't tell the full story he lived.
"It may have been a pretty amazing event to watch back home on TV, but (it) barely registers as a memory," Marine Maj. Matthew Baker told American Forces Press Service from his present assignment on Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif. Baker was executive officer of the unit that pulled down the statue during Baghdad's capture after a crowd of Iraqis tried to do it on their own.

He recently spoke with a teenager who told him he believed the scene had been staged. Baker said, "He started talking about how it was amazing how the U. S. had been able to put that whole . . . thing together and bus people in." That's one of the tallest tales Baker said he's heard in a long time. "That was as spontaneous an event as you could have," he said.
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