The original motives for the invasion of Iraq vacillated between the need to prevent Saddam Hussein’s use of weapons of mass destruction and just liberating the long-suffering Iraqis from the leader’s oppressive rule. Many in the George Bush administration had no doubts the latter was an added benefit to the former. Said Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press, “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”

On this day, April 9, in 2003, Cheney’s predictions were seemingly affirmed when the pictures of a toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square were beamed all over the world. A crowd of Iraqis gathered around the statue in an earlier unsuccessful attempt to bring it down when they flagged down an American M-88 armored vehicle and convinced the crew to help.

The event made front page news around the world, symbolizing as it did the fall of Hussein’s regime, but it may have been staged. Later reports suggested the crowd assembled in the square was much smaller than reported, and that the toppling act was at least partly prompted by the Americans.