The alcohol had taken clearly hold. “Saddam Insane,” she shrieked, as the missiles hit Tel Aviv. “Saddam Insane.” For those present at the dinner table, the bad pun had been repeated one too many times. Everyone was nervous.

We all had family in the city. No rebranding of the Iraqi dictator, as a fool for taking on the US, was going to change that. The only thing we could look forward to were the entrees we’d ordered, and, hopefully, some socializing.

This was in Madrid, in January 1991. The teeshirt above was shot at a Friedrichshain flea market nineteen years later.

Socialist realism is alive and well, if not exactly socialist. The fall of Baghdad, reimagined in the heart of the American desert. 29 Palms, California, June 2008.