"If it were up to us, Uday and Qusay would still be alive today and in their rightful positions of power in Iraq. Don't you wish you listed to us?"
Posted on 07/22/2003 3:18:18 PM PDT by Pokey78
Rarely has a modern tyranny been so tightly in the grip of a single family as was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Saddam trusted few, even at the outset, and alienated, tortured or executed most of those few, including his two sons-in-law, who were butchered in front of their wives. By the end, the regime was essentially a triumvirate of Saddam and his equally venomous sons, Uday and Qusay. So dark was the shadow of terror they cast that “regime change”, as the Americans and British were aware from the start, would never seem truly believable to many Iraqis until these three were captured or killed. They were the targets of the first US airstrike, and repeatedly attacked during the campaign. Their escape from Baghdad was a source not just of frustration to the invasion forces, but also of gnawing anxiety to Iraq's people. With the mangled bodies retrieved by the 101st Airborne from the columned villa in the northern city of Mosul confirmed as those of Uday and Qusay, therefore, the United States has turned a corner in Iraq whose psychological importance is hard to exaggerate. Even if Saddam himself is still alive, his dynasty will be dead.
The current military significance of the two sons’ destruction is harder to estimate. Uday, the playboy given to murderous fits of rage, ran the propaganda machine; but, although initially his father’s favourite, he was ultimately considered by Saddam to be too unstable to be trusted with command. Qusay, the younger, became Saddam’s closest lieutenant, responsible for the secret services and internal security apparatus. He ordered the mass executions in Basra after the 1991 postwar uprising; in the 1990s he was in ultimate charge of hiding Saddam’s banned biological and chemical weapons capabilities from UN inspectors; and he controlled Saddam’s praetorian guard, the special units within the elite Republican Guard picked for their loyalty and ruthlessness.
Qusay is likely to have been told by Saddam to continue the fight after the family fled Baghdad. He had at his command — provided he was able to contact them — the inner core of men who were so foully implicated in the cruelties of the Saddam regime that they had scant reason to surrender. There have been growing indications that the guerrilla attacks that the United States initially treated as opportunistic hit-and-run assaults were to some extent co-ordinated. The sons’ arrival in the northern city of Mosul may have been behind a recent attack on coalition forces in the area of the city.
They would not, however, have gone there if the intensive manhunt tracking them had not been closing down other options. They had been forced out of Tikrit, Saddam's tribal stronghold, and the “Sunni triangle” around Baghdad where the Americans have encountered most armed resistance. Mosul’s inhabitants were repeatedly and viciously purged by the Saddam regime. The place could hardly have been seen by the fugitives as a haven, even if it had the merit of being an unlikely place for them to hide. The villa where they were trapped belonged to a cousin of Saddam — but it seems possible that this cousin betrayed them.
Coming after the fruitless search for Osama bin Laden and the weeks in which Saddam and his sons have slipped time and again through the net, the Mosul operation will boost US military morale. But it was not an ideal outcome. The sons were the regime’s torturers and enforcers, and keepers of its most deadly secrets, some of which will have died with them. It would have been better to have caught them, for sustained interrogation and, ultimately, trial. But the celebratory gunfire heard in Iraqi streets last night was a sign that, with the deaths confirmed, winning the peace has taken a dramatic turn for the better.
Except by the folks who wanted to use their heads for polo.
Daschle and Pelosi are cursing as we speak...
There's a third son - 18 or 19 year old Ali Saddam Hussein - who's evidently unknown to the vast majority of journalists... Notwithstanding, the figurative point is correct, even if not literally so....
Photos, Hell!!!
Put their heads on pikes in that square in Baghdad where their dad's statue used to be (the one that was pulled down by the tank retriever).
Nah! They should have been put into a pillory in the central square of Baghdad, with an open box of razor blades to hand, and a sign in Arabic saying "Family members of their victims are entitled to 1 cubic centimeter of flesh". Just for fun, an open box of salt should also be provided.
Instead, they got what was probably a quick and minimally painful end.
Rather fitting. The best way to rise up in the Baath party was to kill a relative. Saddam's sons apparently got a taste of their own medicine.
"If it were up to us, Uday and Qusay would still be alive today and in their rightful positions of power in Iraq. Don't you wish you listed to us?"
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