Elderly Iraqi Sniper Becomes National Hero

The whole world learned the story of 60-year-old Iraqi farmer Ali Abid bin Mingash, who said that he downed an American Apache chopper with his old rifle. Media outlets called him “Iraqi Rambo.”

The Iraqi television showed a video clip of the Iraqi farmer dancing against the background of the downed helicopter. That footage was then aired all over the world. Yet, American military men say that the chopper had to perform an emergency landing on the old man’s plantation due to an engine malfunction. The helicopter was then destroyed by the American aviation.

Despite the contradictory information, Ali Abid became a national hero in Iraq. The Iraqi president awarded the old man with 50 billion dinars (about $20 thousand). The peasant used the money (which is very big money for Iraq, by the way) and married a young girl. As he said, a lot of local women asked him to marry them after he became a hero. However, the man’s old wife made a scandal of that and even went to file an official complaint against her husband at a local department of the Baath party. In the meantime, the fame of the “Iraqi sniper” reached other Arab countries. Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi awarded the Iraqi farmer with the decoration of courage. A girl from Mauritania sacrificed her jewelry and ordered to make a precious sword for the old man.

Ali bin Mingash has become a character for numerous jokes and cartoons in Kuwait. Here is a joke: “The USA withdraws all of its battleships from the Persian Gulf, because satellites detected the glorious Iraqi sniper aiming his gun at the ships.” Here is another one: “American special units were given a task to kidnap Bin Mingash from his native village in order to clone an aircraft shooter from him.”