Iraq Shows Its Resilience in Town Ravaged by Iran War : Public relations: At Ground Zero in that bloody conflict, Saddam Hussein has erected a powerful memorial.

For mile after mile along the highway leading to this strategic city, tens of thousands of matchstick date palms stand like specters of the bloody battle for Al Faw, each neatly decapitated and incinerated by napalm bombing runs from just across the border in Iran.

Fields of twisted, rusting sheet metal soon appear, the remains of oil-tank farms, storage depots and refineries that were among the targets of the millions of artillery shells and aerial bombs that Iraq acknowledges fell on a city that archeologists date back to 2500 BC.

Finally, at the place where that ancient city once stood--for six years a killing ground that Iraq says claimed the lives of 52,948 of its soldiers and 120,000 more Iranians--there is not a trace left of that rich past.

And no one lives in Al Faw anymore.

This is Ground Zero--proof from Iraq’s brutal eight-year war with Iran that the nation that has brought the world to the brink of armed conflict already knows well what it is like to be bombed and bombed again.

It was to view what has arisen in Al Faw’s place--a powerful, if unsubtle, message of resilience and internal strength--that prompted the Iraqi Information Ministry on Friday to organize the first major excursion outside Baghdad for journalists since the Persian Gulf crisis began.

In what was once a neighborhood that a ministry guide said was destroyed during the war, President Saddam Hussein has built scores of townhouses, office complexes and two-story homes. There’s a new football stadium bearing Hussein’s portrait; a series of Cubist fountains; an immense shrine consisting of rows of towering columns flanking a large bronze statue of Hussein, and, on the banks of the Shatt al Arab waterway that divides Iraq and Iran, a message from Hussein drafted when Iraq reclaimed Al Faw from Iranian occupation on April 18, 1988.

“This is the greatest of victories,” the plaque proclaims beside a small portrait of Hussein wearing military fatigues and sitting atop a white horse framed by two golden crossed swords. “It will be recorded in history books for all generations to come, and it is the right of all Iraqis and Arabs to celebrate this great victory.”

The ministry guides insisted that soon there will be people in Al Faw to read that inscription, just as soon as the construction is completed. But what went unanswered as the two busloads of journalists drove under a green-and-gray marble arch financed by “the people of Yemen,” was what, if anything, Iraq really gained from the battle here--indeed, from an entire war that cost Iraq and Iran tens of billions of dollars and half a million lives each.

In an effort to consolidate his forces, Hussein last month unilaterally ceded every inch of territory Iraq had conquered in the war, which ended with a cease-fire soon after Al Faw was reclaimed in 1988.

At one point, as journalists gazed over the now-peaceful Shatt al Arab, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, one asked a guide, “So now that you have Kuwait, has all the blood shed here in Faw been forgotten?”

“What good is Faw if Baghdad will be bombed?” the guide asked in return.

The implication was clear and intensely pragmatic, but there were far more tangible signs during the two-hour drive between Al Faw and Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, a once-bustling metropolis that also still bears deep scars of war.

On both sides of the highway are thousands of ghostly, intricate tank and artillery bunkers, elaborate trench works and retaining walls, towering observation posts and hastily abandoned military camps.

All were deserted when the Iraqi armored divisions that had remained distrustfully along the Iranian border after the war were quickly redeployed to Iraq’s new, southernmost flank--not far from the forward U.S. positions in the Saudi Arabian desert.

The tens of thousands of redeployed Iraqi soldiers, part of a Kuwait-based force that the Pentagon says is 430,000 strong, have now dug in similarly in a series of defensive lines throughout the occupied emirate.

Perhaps inadvertently, the group of journalists in Al Faw on Friday encountered hundreds of those same Iraqi troops during an afternoon tour of markets in the heart of Basra.

Bustling with shoppers who routinely fill the souks on Iraq’s once-weekly Islamic holiday, the markets were jammed with Kuwait-based troops on weekend leave.

There were members of Hussein’s elite, 100,000-man presidential guard. There were paratroopers, artillery gunners, infantrymen and motor-pool sergeants from the regular army. And there were many soldiers who said they had participated in Iraq’s lightning strike that reclaimed Al Faw.

One paratrooper, who was shot in the thigh during that offensive, sipped tea outside a gritty market shop and explained that he spent three months in the hospital recovering from his wound.

“Do you mind being back in the army?” he was asked.

“No,” he responded flatly. “This is my duty, my life.”

“Are you ready for another war?”

“A soldier is always ready for war.”

A more political response came when an off-duty soldier, wandering farther down the market lane in civilian dress, told reporters: “Bush is a traitor. We don’t want war, we want peace. But if we are forced to fight, we will defend our country.”

The response was government line all the way, and typical of most of the remarks from members of Hussein’s armed forces, which Western military analysts say are among the most deeply indoctrinated in the world.

Ample visual imagery in Basra explains just how that indoctrination is reinforced: In a vision spectacular in its repetition and scale, Hussein spent millions of dollars erecting 90 larger-than-life statues along the west bank of the Shatt al Arab in the heart of Basra, along a corniche virtually demolished by the incessant shelling of Iranian howitzers.

Each bronze statue is a likeness of an individual officer with the rank of captain or above who was killed in action during the Iran-Iraq War--and each points an accusing finger in the direction of Iran.

Typical is the plaque beneath a statue of an Iraqi air force pilot, his jet helmet wedged beneath his right arm, that declares: “The martyr hero, the Flying Capt. Ibrahim Alahawi Aziz of Squadron 49, who was martyred in the defense of Basra on April 19, 1984.”

Placed above that plaque, as it is on each of the 90 statues, is another prominent inscription that proclaims, “The statues were made by the victorious leader, President of the Republic, Saddam Hussein.”

The impact of such repetition in Basra became even clearer when a few journalists broke off from the group and strolled along the corniche without Information Ministry guides.

At one point opposite the row of statues to the “martyrs,” on the site of an old office building destroyed by Iranian shelling during the war, the journalists noted an elegant structure of teak and marble in the final stages of construction.

“Is this a house or an office?” one journalist, speaking Arabic, asked two boys no older than 12 who were passing by.

“Neither,” one said. “It’s a palace.”

“A palace for Saddam Hussein,” the other quickly added.

“No, I don’t think so. How do you know?” the journalist said with a strong tone of skepticism.

“Of course it is. He is the builder of everything.”