A Room with a View...

It's a 95 degree day in mid-March and here's a peek at Victory Over America Palace (VOAP)...

Fittingly, Saddam never finished VOAP before the 2003 invasion... in his grand, "Oil-for-Palaces" scheme...

Since this is the second visit for me and my staff, we walked around to the Victory Over Iran Palace (VOIP) side... both palaces are connected by this unfinished wall in the middle...

Here's the front entrance to VOIP not nearly as swank as VOAP side... giving it the appearance of a backdoor...

The VOIP doorway is adorned with helmets taken from dead Iranian soldiers. A bit of a morbid display celebrating Iraq's "victory" over its combative Shi'a neighbor...

As you turn around, this is the view from the VIOP entrance looking over Saddam's exclusive man-made lake and the infamous Perfume Palace off in the distance...

Saddam dedicated VOIP with this inscription, a verse from the Qur'an...

Once inside, we enter a huge, 10-sided rotunda prepared in marble, teak, with various mosaic designs...

There are several doorways about the rotunda... the inscription above this door says, "God is Great" in Arabic...

Since there is not electricity in VOAP, we wander in the dark Indiana Jones-style...

After several turns down a long hallway, we enter a vaulted banquet room...

And climb several flights of stairs up, up, up... without hand rails.  Reminds me of hiking Beacon Rock on the Columbia Gorge! 

To make life easier, Saddam had his own personal elevator...

That took him straight to the top...

To a huge ballroom, over 200 meters in length...

What a great place for a Nerf football game! Dad and the girls versus the boys and Mom... with mandatory girl QB every 2 downs... Two hand touch for the guys and one hand for the girls. Oh... and only the girls can run... Cool? Let's play!

In the middle is a balcony for Saddam to peruse his party guests...

Off to one side we see the aftermath of a computer-guided V-DAM missile...

At either end are several long terraces that wrap around the building and overlook BIAP and Baghdad...

Each terrace is lined with private guest rooms, some rooms are adorned with graffiti... this one says, "Fallujah" in Arabic...

And some are adorned in English... like this one... tagged in the dust on that "Saddam-chic" oak and marble wainscoting...

All the floors at VOAP have been laid out in tile and covered with plastic and cement... kept that way until the final touches were completed... but March 20th of '03 brought an end to Saddam's palace plans...

Finally, the view from this unfinished guest suite... which looks to the southwest - past Flintstone Village toward BIAP and our home in Camp Cropper.