Underneath is the logo: “Bush is Criminal.”The Americans considered bombing the al-Rashid in 1991, ostensibly because they claimed there was an Iraqi command post underneath it. The real reason was that they would have liked to put the satellite dishes used by American television correspondents out of action. In one of the great journalistic bug-outs of all time almost all the American print journalists left Iraq voluntarily before the bombing started.The ground-floor bar of the hotel was, in fact, accidentally hit by part of a Tomahawk missile brought down by Iraqi anti-aircraft fire The bar was wrecked. The preferred bill is that issued in 1996 and after with a large picture of Benjamin Franklin on the front. An Iraqi friend said: “A hundred dollars is worth so much to us these days that we can’t afford to be taken in by a forgery.”
For most purposes Iraqi dinars are necessary.

They usually come in bundles of 250 dinar notes and the currency weighs a lot when when you change a hundred dollar bill. When the auctioneer called out 182,000 dinars I dropped out – 182,000 of anything seemed like too much money. In private dealings, Iraqis avoid this problem by using American hundred dollar bills, but not any bill will do. The price was still only $120, far less than the mirror was worth anywhere outside Baghdad, but I found it impossible to keep putting my hand up because the nominal figure was so high.

Others, mostly Iraqi antique dealers, liked the mirror too The bidding was hot. Further investigation may reveal which queue in which Sicilian post office he can be picked up in.. I spent a frustrating evening trying to buy a silver mirror and a carpet at the al-Baghdadi auction house on the east bank of the Tigris. The prices in both cases were cheap but I found it impossible to go on bidding because they were in Iraqi dinars, now valued at 1,480 to the US dollar. I was confident enough when the auctioneer started the bidding for the mirror at 50,000 dinars This was cheap. The mirror was pretty and made 50 years ago in the holy city of Kerbala.