Al-Rashid Hotel

Hotel Al-Rasheed (sometimes spelled Al-Rashid) (Arabic,فندق الرشيد) is an 18-story hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, favored by journalists and media personnel. It is named for Harun Al-Rashid. In 1982, in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, in an attempt to show the world that Iraq was stable and safe, Saddam Hussein was planning to host the international Non-Aligned Movement Conference in the hotel. Legendary Iranian general and fighter pilot ace Abbas Doran led a large air attack on Baghdad to prove Saddam wrong, and hit military targets all over the city. When his F-4 Phantom fighter plane was badly hit, rather than ejecting and being taken prisoner (or possibly murdered), he crashed his fighter jet into the building, badly damaging it. The...