AOL News: Rumsfeld Painting Expected to Be a Hit in Baghdad
This painting by Muayad Muhsin will be exhibited in Baghdad on Monday. Art can connect you with how people feel much more effectively than words can, in many cases. 
This exhibit is a message we should pay close attention to, if we want to understand the current state of the conflict.
While Rumsfeld's image is true to life, he sits next to a partially damaged statue of a lion standing over a human - a traditional image of strength during the ancient Babylon civilization. The statue's stone base is ripped open, revealing shelves from which white piece of papers are flying away, later turning into birds soaring high into an ominously gray sky.
Muhsin said the symbolism has to do with Washington's repeated assertions in the months before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction, the cornerstone in the Bush administration's argument for going to war.
No such weapons turned up, but the Bush administration maintained that removing Saddam's regime alone justified the decision to invade Iraq.
"They did not find the weapons and, instead, found the annals of an ancient civilization that turned into birds of love, peace and knowledge," said Muhsin, himself a native of the area around the central Iraqi city of Babil, or Babylon, south of Baghdad.
"Rumsfeld's boots deliver a message from America: 'We rule the world,"' Muhsin, 41, told The Associated Press in an interview. "It speaks of America's total indifference to what the rest of the world thinks."
This aptly sums up one of the major problems with our current foreign policy. The indifference we show to world opinion reflects poorly on us. Even the people we're ostensibly liberating know this.
"The Americans brought us rosy dreams but left us with nightmares, they came with a broad smile but gave us beheaded bodies and booby-trapped car."
