Victory Base Complex, a site ringed by 42 km of blast walls and razor wire, was the US nerve center for the Iraq war almost from the moment American troops entered the capital and pulled down Saddam's statue in 2003.
The handover of Victory Base to Iraq's government was a big step in the US pullout from Iraq as Washington consolidates its presence in Baghdad at its sprawling embassy on the Tigris River in the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone.
Fewer than 500 US troops remain in the capital, according to a US official. About 12,000 troops are still in Iraq, down from a peak of about 170,000 at the height of the war. All of the remaining forces are due to leave by the end of this year, except for a small contingent of under 200 attached to the US Embassy.
The top US war leaders from Ricardo Sanchez to David Petraeus to the current commander, Gen. Lloyd Austin, lived at one of Saddam's villas on the base, a 20-room, 25,000-square-foot mansion where King Hussein of Jordan was said to have liked to fish off the back porch during Saddam's reign.
US officials said Saddam built the network of palaces and villas and a complex of lakes on the grounds, including his Victory over America palace feting the 1991 Gulf War, in which US forces drove Iraq out of Kuwait, and the Victory over Iran palace commemorating the 1980s campaign against his neighbor.
US forces used as their war operations center Saddam's Al-Faw Palace, a 450,000-square-foot edifice of 62 rooms, including 29 bathrooms, designed with France's Versailles in mind and decorated with French provincial furniture.
US officials said they left behind a massive, throne-like wooden chair given to Saddam by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Saddam Hussein was imprisoned at Victory Base for about two years in a maximum-security facility built in the bombed wreckage of a villa once used by security forces headed by his son Uday, US officials said.
"Building 114," as US troops knew it, was located on a small island in a lake, connected by a causeway and a drawbridge, and was shared by Saddam and his henchman, Ali Hassan Al-Majeed, or Chemical Ali. Both were executed.
