Just two hours after he signed over America's sovereignty of Iraq, Paul Bremer, the proconsul of the occupation, climbed the steps of a US Air Force C-130 transport aircraft to take his last flight out of Iraq.
He turned at the top step to wave for a final photograph and then, 14 months after he first arrived, he was gone.
Mr Bremer, 62, spent barely 20 minutes in yesterday's hurried and hidden ceremony restoring power to an Iraqi government.
(snip)
As with the entire handover ceremony, it was almost entirely hidden from public view: the US administration hoped to avoid similarities with the image of the last Huey taking off from the US embassy in Saigon in April 1975 that came to symbolise America's defeat in Vietnam.
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