on this day Corporal Edward Chin the US Marine who had draped the Stars and Stripes Flag over the head of the toppled twenty foot metal statue of Saddam Hussein was murdered in cold blood by an enraged mob swirling through Firdos Square in Central Baghdad.

A decidedly unrepresentative group of Iraqis and foreign journalists had been drawn to a phony staged media event to showcase the Fall of Baghdad.

Since the early afternoon Iraqis had been tearing down portraits of Saddam, throwing shoes and chipping away at the base of the statue with sledgehammers. A BBC correspondent reported that his impression was of "a newly free people" expressing their "overwhelming joy".

Despite carefully prepared instructions given to Marine Gunnery Sergeant Leon Lambert, the US tank crew sent to topple the statue had exceeded their orders and inadvertently delivered the unwelcome subliminal message that the people of Iraq had been conquered rather liberated.

Other less select members of Baghdad Society were now drawn to the square. And so an iconic image designed to combine the best dramatic elements of Iwo Jima, the Toppling of Lenin's Statue and the Fall of the Berlin Wall descended into the tragedy of Mogadishu.

Perhaps the murder prevented a greater tragedy because those authorities in the Bush Administration that had questioned America's ability to nation build on the Arab Street were delivered inarguable evidence that they were absolutely right.

Three months later, the last US troops left Iraq, because, as Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had promised, there would be "no quagmires".