Baghdad, Iraq ? The doors of the town house opened to reveal a playboy’s fantasy straight from the 1960s: mirrored bedroom, lamps shaped like women, airbrushed paintings of a topless blonde woman and a mustached hero battling a crocodile.

Troops thought it was the home of Saddam Hussein’s mistress, though on the wall and in the bedroom were photos of the Iraqi president and a woman who appeared to be his wife. The company commander suspected they had found one of the Iraqi leader’s many safe houses.

“This must have been Saddam’s love shack,” said Sgt. Spencer Willardson of Logan, Utah.

The split-level, one-bedroom town house is in a Baath Party enclave in an upscale neighborhood in central Baghdad where generals and senior party officials lived.

As U.S. officials set up command posts there, troops were going home by home, searching for looters and weapons.

Next door, where iron sheets were welded over all the windows, they found more than 6,000 Beretta pistols, 650 Sig Sauer pistols, 248 Colt Revolvers, 160 Belgian 7.65 mm pistols, 12 cases of Sterling submachine guns and four cases of anti-tank missiles all still in the unopened original boxes. There were also tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition mortars and cases of old handguns and heavy machine guns.

Not far off was another presidential palace, this one with a Yugoslav-built, chemical and biological weapons-proof bunker underneath it. A U.S. Army team inspected it and it appeared to be strictly defensive in nature.

But this home was different: beanbag chairs, a garden of plastic plants, a sunken kitchen and a room for a servant, all 1960s-style.

The sunken wet bar was stocked with 20-year-old Italian red wines and expensive cognacs, brandies and Scotch whiskys, the same brands found in several presidential palaces.

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Eric Hooper looks at a fantasy painting in a house in an upscale neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq. Photos of Saddam Hussein and Parisoula Lampsos, a woman who has publicly claimed to be his mistress, were displayed inside the house. Lampsos escaped to Lebanon in 2002.

The glassware, too, was the same pattern that was found in at least three palaces also visited by U.S. troops since the regime collapsed. The pattern features the Iraqi government seal and a gold pattern on that rim.

But when it came time to eat dinner, Saddam was served his food on the official fine china of the Kuwaiti royal family, complete with the family seal and gold and maroon trim.

Capt. Chris Carter, commander of A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, said the home appeared to be one of Saddam’s safe houses. Officials concluded that the house was used by Parisoula Lampsos, who publicly claimed to be Saddam’s mistress. She escaped to Lebanon in 2002.

Upstairs was a television room with bright blue, pink and yellow throw pillows. The bathroom included a whirlpool bath. The kingsize bed was fitted into an alcove with mirrors on two sides and a fantasy painting on the third.

The home’s 1960s look — parodied in the series of “Austin Powers” spy spoofs — inspired a round of imitations from soldiers slogging door to door.

“Yeah, baaabeee,” said Carter, doing his best imitation of actor Mike Myers’ character.

“Shagadelic,” another soldier shouted.

Indeed, the carpet was navy blue shag.