U.S. Shows Photos of Saddam's Dead Sons

A.P. ^ | Thu July 24 2003 | MATT KELLEY

[Screaming_Gerbil]

WASHINGTON - The United States released pictures of the bodies of Odai and Qusai Hussein because the Iraqi people "deserved confirmation" that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s sons were dead, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.

Related Links
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The body of Odai Hussein (AP)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030724/168/4s2om.html

The body of Qusai Hussein (AP)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/030724/168/4s32j.html&e=8&ncid=1479

He said "there are people speculating" that one or both brothers committed suicide rather than be captured by American forces Tuesday. The bodies will have to be examined to determine whether either man took his own life, Rumsfeld said.

The defense secretary said coalition forces would continue to "root out and capture and kill" members of Saddam's former regime. Odai and Qusai died in an assault on a home in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where they were hiding.

"These two individuals are particularly vicious," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon (news - web sites) news conference. "They are now dead. They have been carefully identified. The Iraqi people have been waiting for confirmation of that, and they, in my view, deserved confirmation of that."

U.S. officials in Baghdad released photographs Thursday showing the battered, bearded faces of the two dead men.

Some Iraqis had called on U.S. authorities to prove that Odai and Qusai Hussein were killed in the shootout. Rumsfeld and the top U.S. civilian official in Iraq (news - web sites), L. Paul Bremer, said they believed most Iraqis would be convinced by the photos.

"The disbelief runs very deep, and it goes to the level almost of paranoia," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Wednesday on PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" program. "One of the great effects of yesterday for Iraqis is to demonstrate our seriousness."

Wolfowitz and other Bush administration officials said the deaths probably would lessen, but not eliminate, attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. Proving Odai and Qusai are dead helps press the point that Saddam no longer has any influence in Iraq, they said.

"Now more than ever all Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back," President Bush (news - web sites) said Wednesday.

Saddam probably is helping to coordinate attacks on U.S. soldiers, Wolfowitz said.

"If he's alive, I think he's contributing to it," he said.

Earlier Wednesday, Wolfowitz said American officials underestimated the strength of resistance in Iraq by Saddam's supporters and have done other "stupid things" there.

"It was difficult to imagine before the war that the criminal gang of sadists and gangsters who have run Iraq for 35 years would continue fighting, fighting what has been sometimes called a guerrilla war," said Wolfowitz, the second-ranking official at the Pentagon.

Separately, the head of the U.S.-led occupation force in Iraq said he plans to have electricity, water and health care back to prewar levels in two months.

Bremer said his plans also call for 1,000 Iraqi schools to be rehabilitated by fall and millions of textbooks to be stripped of Saddam's Baath Party ideology.

The admission of mistakes by Wolfowitz was a departure from the Bush administration's efforts to put events in Iraq in a positive light.

"Some conditions were worse than we anticipated, particularly in the security area," Wolfowitz, returned Tuesday from a five-day tour of Iraq, told a Pentagon news conference.

He named three:

_No Iraqi military units "of significant size" defected to the American side during the war.

_"The police turned out to require a massive overhaul."

_"Third, and worst of all," the resistance was underestimated.

Many Iraqis also expect the impossible from the Americans, Wolfowitz said.

"Sometimes it's nice to have the reputation for being almost godlike, but, frankly, I think it produces this phenomenon that if something isn't happening, it must be because the Americans don't want it to happen, and they begin to invent the most elaborate reasons to explain it," Wolfowitz said. "And the fact is — you know it — we often just make mistakes. We do stupid things."

Bremer presented his plans to Bush and members of Congress earlier this week.

Rebuilding Iraq's economy will take at least three years and billions of dollars, Bremer said. Enhancing Iraq's electricity and water systems to meet its citizens' needs will cost an estimated $13 billion and $16 billion, respectively, Bremer said.

"That's obviously a lot of money, even in Washington," Bremer said. "I do believe the American taxpayer will almost certainly be asked to send more money so we can consolidate the rebuilding of Iraq."