Rumsfeld, from an Iraqi perspective…

Picnic by Iraqi artist, Muayad Muhsin

MSNBC has this…

The oil-on-canvas, 5-by-3-foot work shows Rumsfeld in a blue jacket, tie, khaki pants and army boots reading from briefing papers. His boots are resting on what appears to be an ancient stone.

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.”