The Palace

The Al Faw Palace. It's actually quite a fixture here on the base. Not only is it a very imposing feature, it's being used as a central office building for the Corps headquarters. So, I spent a portion of each week inside the palace either conducting business or attending meetings. It was one of Saddam's many palaces.

You can see that the palace is surrounded by a man-made lake. It is actually pretty nice. The lake has been stocked with many fish. As you can see from this picture

, there are quite a few and they are actually quite large. They are well cared for. It seems that almost every time I walk by, there is a small group of people feeding the fish. They know to "come running" when they see people looking over the fence. Pavlov at his best.

Once you walk into the palace and through the entryway, you are in the central rotunda. As you can see, it is fairly ornate. It's all marble and quite large. The design on the floor is the star used as the symbol of the Baath party. The two gentlemen to the left will give you a sense of scale. The palace is three stories tall, so it's quite impressive there in the rotunda.

In the rotunda, off to the side, is a chair, or throne, I'm not sure what it was used for. The history behind it is that it was given to Saddam by Yassar Arafat. It's all hand-carved wood, and the white decoration is mother of pearl. It's not very comfortable to sit in. I don't think I would even be able to last through one episode of The Simpsons!

I wish I could read the local language. I don't remember what this says exactly, but it's some grand quote that was attributed to Saddam. There is stuff like this all over the place. Saddam was pretty full of himself.

The thing that really struck me after looking around the palace for a while is something that you can't really see in the pictures. This palace is not put together very well. In fact I don't know that I've ever seen shoddier workmanship. There are very few places where the joints actually meet at a 90 degree angle. In the places that the marble has fallen away, it's apparent the the structure of the building is nothing more than dried mud, covered with a veneer of marble. The interesting thing about it is that I would think that when you are the tyrannical dictator of a country and are going to build a palace, you would "hire" the best craftsmen in the country. So, if this is the best they can do, it's no wonder the country's infrastructure is in such bad shape. There is a "mansion" on the lake at Camp Slayer that is being used for offices also. You cannot use the restrooms because the plumbing they put in can't handle solid waste. It's an interesting place.