US President George W. Bush wanted Saddam Hussein to go to hell. But as it was, the marines brought Washington's bete noire down in Paradise Square.

US tanks were greeted at the square by dozens of cheering Iraqis rushing to bring down Saddam's towering statue, one of the capital's main symbols of his 24-year rule of terror.

The crowd soon set about trying to destroy the monument in a symbolic gesture marking the collapse of the Baath Party regime that has been in power since 1968 and under Saddam's iron-fist rule since 1979.

"There is no God but God, and Saddam is the enemy of God!" chanted the crowd, as enthusiastic youths brought a ladder to climb up the massive marble plinth of the statue.

One huge Iraqi took a sledgehammer to the plinth and after a few mighty blows passed it on to eager men queuing for a go before returning to the task himself.

In a scene broadcast live around the world, the US marines sent a tank recovery vehicle into the center of the roundabout with a crane to secure a chain round the statue's neck and back up to pull it over.

Saddam, his right hand in a gesture of waving farewell, hung on in horizontal position for a few seconds until another tug finally brought him to the ground, prompting dozens to jump on the figure shouting with joy.

But in a little corner, a group of Iraqis was clearly angered by the scene.

"It is not that we liked him, but we do not understand how our people are cheering for foreigners, and Americans in particular, taking down our president," said Amer al-Khazraji.

"A revolution is done by the people, not by a foreign imperialist army driving tanks all the way up to the heart of Baghdad. We are giving out the Arab world's great capital to marines!" said the man, with tears in his eyes.

During the scene, a marine put a US flag over Saddam's face, recalling an incident that brought condemnation of some of his comrades who briefly hoisted the Stars and Stripes in Umm Qasr early in the war.

But he soon replaced it with an Iraqi flag as a scarf before that too was taken away.

At the Palestine Hotel overlooking the square, other men worked at the entrance to bring down a huge portrait of a smiling Saddam in coat and hat, but having failed they finally set it ablaze.

The Al-Fardus Square statue was the last to be erected to Saddam as part of the personality cult that surrounded the "great leader", who has not been seen since Monday's US air strike on a Baghdad building where he was believed to have been hiding.

Hand outstretched towards Jerusalem, the monument dominated the square where it was inaugurated on April 28 last year, the president's 65th birthday.

The enormous bronze perhaps six metres (20 feet) tall stood atop a plinth of the similar height surrounded by 37 ornate white columns, symbolizing the Iraqi leader's 1937 birth and each bearing the initials SH in Arabic.

Youths had already ripped a plaque off the base.

But if the body of the monument fell, the marines and the Iraqi youths could not manage to bring down the feet of the statue of Saddam, the man tracked by the US-led war and whose whereabouts are still unknown.

The statue was later dismembered, and the head was then dragged down the street by cheering and laughing Iraqis.

Speaking of the incident later, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington: "One cannot help thinking of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain."

SPACE.WIRE