US empties biggest Iraq base,takes Saddam toilet

The US military is vacating Saddam Husseins ornate palaces at its war headquarters in Baghdad and will turn the property over to Iraq next month,but Saddams prison toilet is leaving with the Americans.

The US military is vacating Saddam Husseins ornate palaces at its war headquarters in Baghdad and will turn the property over to Iraq next month,but Saddams prison toilet is leaving with the Americans.

The stainless steel commode and a reinforced steel door have been removed from the cell where the dictator spent two years before his 2006 execution and is destined for a military police museum in the United States.

Were not taking anything that the Iraqis had. We are only taking stuff that we put in,we utilised,and when we didnt need it any more,we took it home, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Brooks,a US military historian,said on a tour of the site on Monday.

The villa where US troops built a maximum-security jail for Saddam and his henchman Chemical Ali sits on a US complex near Baghdads airport known as Victory Base,which is scheduled to be handed over to Iraqs government in December as US forces withdraw completely by years end.

Surrounded by 42 km of blast walls and razor wire,Victory,the largest of the 505 bases the US military once operated in Iraq,housed over 40,000 soldiers and up to 25,000 workers. Only 4,000 troops remain there.

From a peak of around 170,000,Washington has 31,000 troops remaining in Iraq,at 12 bases. President Barack Obamas October 21 announcement that all the remaining forces would leave by year-end kicked the withdrawal into high gear.

The palaces that once housed the US war command,modeled on Frances Versailles and scattered around a series of interconnected,man-made lakes,are being emptied save for Saddams French provincial furniture.

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US officials said they are leaving behind improvements valued at over $100 million on Victory base,including buildings,water tanks and generators.

Behind a steel drawbridge and across a short causeway on an island,the maximum-security villa where Saddam and Chemical Ali were imprisoned known simply as Building 114 appears a bombed-out wreck.

Saddams interrogation room is next to his cell. Saddam was jailed at the villa from 2004-06; his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed,or Chemical Ali,from 2004-08. Pointing the way to Saddams 8×20 foot windowless living space are the words Saddam Hussein Detention Cell in black print on a single sheet of white paper stuck to a wall. His guards put a sign reading Door No: 13 above the cells entry.

Chemical Alis standard-issue combination toilet-sink is still in place but Saddams was removed in August,Brooks said. Its going to the Military Police Museum at Fort Leonard Wood,Missouri, he said.