A fellow explorer is in Iraq, and has been sending back some photos from the palaces and other interesting places he has been.
He was recently in the Victory over America palace, which was Uday’s. Three shots have text in arabic, could one of you fine dopers translate?
http://www.uer.ca/locations/viewgal.asp?picid=16800
http://www.uer.ca/locations/viewgal.asp?picid=16801
http://www.uer.ca/locations/viewgal.asp?picid=16805
Anybody? Should I repost in GQ where all the smart people hang out? 
Actually, yes, I think GQ seems to be the right forum for this. Translating in Arabic is hardly mundane for the majority of members here. 
I’m taking my third semester of college Arabic, which doesn’t make me fluent in the least, though I can pick out words here and there.
The first two photos’ texts both begin with the same line, reading “bismallah al-rahmnan al-rahiim,” which means “In the name of God, The Merciful, The Compassionate.” Not that this has anything to do with God, mind you. It’s normal in Arab culture to say or write these words before any massive undertaking.
Other than that, I can’t tell you a thing, except to say that I see the words “God,” something having to do with “friend,” various words in the past and present tenses, the word “Arabic,” the word “old/large,” and other such non-useful stuff.
Sorry I can’t help you any more.
From what I can make out on the tile of picture with 17/12/1998 is
bismillah ir rahman ir-rahim
Inna fathana la ka fathun mobeenun
This is the first ayah (line) in sura Al-fath in the quran
verily we have granted thee a manifest victory
sada kullah al azeem - God revealed the truth
The third line looks like its not quranic, I’ll try to translate some later, its very hard because the writing is small and it’s missing the vowels I’m used to reading.
fourth line yow mul fatha 17/12/1998 (on this day of success)
more later.
I’ll give it a shot, but laa anaa atakallam al-'arabiyyah bi-Talaaqati.
Starting with the third line, going about halfway across:
Kham bi-‘aran allah na’'aar [something, kind of hard to read] 'aar 'ammaar [something] naHr ba’r
Word by word, this would be something like,
Kham: decay
bi-'aran: with - leprosy? The leprosy part is a total guess.
allah: God
na’'aar: troublemaker
'aar: servility or disgrace
'ammaar: enduring, tolerant, devout, or rational (I’m unsure about the root here)
naHr: slaughter
ba’r: feces
You can probably string that together as well as I can, but if I had to guess, I’d say something like,
“God caused the troublemaker to decay with leprosy, disgracing him before the slaughter of the devout…” I’m filling in several words that I don’t see there (like “before”), but that’s my best approximation of the gist of it. Sorry I can’t do better; I’ll try to give it some more time later.
Like cherry said, it’s very hard to read without the short vowel tashkil, which is generally how I determine what’s a verb and what’s a noun. There’s a bad habit I should break.
I just had a thought: “leprosy” might be “shield.” At any rate, I think it’s some kind of growth or covering on the body.
Well, I have some good news, and I have some good news.
The bad news is, the translation above makes no sense given the larger context of the plaque, and is in fact totally and embarrassingly wrong. The good news, after playing around with it for a few days and consulting a dictionary or two, I think I have it right.
Starting with line three (others did a good job on the first two lines), this should be what it says:
Rough, but for now it’s the best I can do.
Thanks a bunch. I didn’t even have to repost it to GQ.