Description

U-Turn Sign (Baghdad – Iraq War):

This sign was posted just outside the Al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003. When U.S. troops (3rd Infantry Division) first entered the downtown portion of the city from the airport road, there was a firefight where the Conference Center and the Al-Rasheed Hotel are located. The sign was sprayed with shrapnel and blown off its post. Days later, I was at the Al-Rasheed Hotel, doing a story, and I saw the sign lying in the street. I picked it up and added it to my collection. The Al-Rasheed Hotel became famous during the first Gulf War (1991) as the home of CNN and other media crews covering that conflict. In 2003, after U.S. troops had entered Baghdad during the Iraq War, they converted the hotel into a base for coalition and American military forces. The structure suffered an attack by 28 Katyusha rockets on October 26, 2003. The strikes killed one soldier and wounded 17 others. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was at the hotel that night, but wasn’t hurt. The Al-Rasheed was renovated by the Army Corps of Engineers, completed in 2008.