In palace, opulence, mementos, lions

Lt. Col. Philip deCamp, commander of a tank battalion, stood amazed to be standing in the room where Saddam slept, perhaps very recently. They discovered a pen of emaciated lions, cheetahs and bears, and that the rose gardens hid rotting corpses of Iraqi soldiers.

Scouts from the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division found a live sheep and fed a cheetah, which was joined in the feast by three lions. Across the pen, a thin brown bear cub dragged the entrails of a sheep provided earlier by the scouts.

On the other side of the palace, soldiers had buried 15 soldiers with scores more in the gardens and in bunkers. The palace was so large that deCamp had his men write the number of rooms on a index card: 142 offices, 64 bathrooms, 19 meeting rooms, 22 kitchens, countless bedrooms, one movie theatre, five ‘‘huge ballrooms’’ and one ‘‘football-field sized monster ballroom.’’ Even a cursory tour took hours.

Earlier, deCamp discovered that some soldiers had looted liquor and cigarettes. He gave them a one-hour deadline: If they confessed and returned the goods, they would not be punished. If a search turned up the spoils, ‘‘turn ’em over to the CID.’’ (LAT-WP)