Posted on 08/02/2003 1:02:37 PM PDT by Pan_Yans Wife
Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s two elder sons and a grandson were buried as martyrs Saturday in rocky soil near the deposed leader's hometown, where insurgents afterward attacked U.S. troops with three remote controlled bombs.
Despite the violence in Tikrit — a center of anti-American guerrilla resistance — the U.S. administrator for Iraq (news - web sites) declared he had not seen hatred of American troops among the country's people.
Instead, L. Paul Bremer, chief of the American occupation administration, blamed incessant attacks against U.S. forces on foreign terrorists and three groups aligned with the ousted Saddam regime.
He implied those fighters did not represent the larger Iraqi population. "I have not noticed any hatred among the Iraqi people for the American soldiers," Bremer said at a news conference.
Yet in dozens of interviews conducted by The Associated Press, Iraqi citizens voiced growing bitterness and a desire for revenge against U.S. soldiers for the way they have allegedly treated the population while attempting to pacify the country.
At least two American soldiers were injured in the remote-controlled explosions in Tikrit after elders of Saddam's tribe buried the ousted dictators sons Odai and Qusai, along with Qusai's 14-year-old son, in an outlying village.
Tribal leaders chanted prayers over three side-by-side graves in the family plot in al-Uja, where the Iraqi leader was born.
The family wrapped the three bodies in the nation's flag, designating them as martyrs for the Iraqi cause.
They were killed in a gunbattle with American forces in the northern city of Mosul on July 22, after being on the run for more than three months. Their betrayer, thought to have been the owner of the villa where they were gunned down, received a $30 million reward from the United States and was spirited out of Iraq under U.S. protection.
Lt. Col. Steve Russell, of the Tikrit-based 4th Infantry Division, said villagers wanted the funeral to be peaceful.
"The people of al-Uja just wanted it over with, they didn't want to make a big deal about it," Russell said. He said tribal leaders contacted the army on Friday to tell them the bodies would be arriving.
"One of the sheiks was very nervous about it all and came to our forces pleading that we be aware so nothing would happen to the people of al-Uja," Russell said.
The army flew the bodies to an airfield just north of Tikrit, and sent them in Iraqi Red Crescent Society ambulances to the cemetery, Russell said. About 20 cars passed through an existing U.S. military checkpoint to reach the burial. Russell said soldiers observed proceedings from a distance but did not approach.
The Red Crescent acted as intermediary between Saddam's family and the U.S. military, which had kept the bodies in refrigerated storage at Baghdad International Airport.
Military morticians had reconstructed the brothers' faces to look lifelike, and allowed Western journalists to videotape and photograph them, after Iraqi civilians voiced skepticism that Odai and Qusai were really dead. Images of the autopsied bodies were flashed across the Arab world by satellite broadcasters, largely dispelling lingering doubts.
Still, many Iraqis complained about the treatment of the bodies — the autopsies and reconstruction of the brothers' faces — as being deeply contrary to Muslim practice that demands corpses be buried untouched and before sundown on the day of death.
Bremer, meanwhile, joined the chorus of U.S. officials, mainly in Washington, who have sought to blame the relentless attacks on American forces partly on foreign terrorists. Other violence, he said, was the work of remnants of Saddam's Baath Party, his Fedayeen Saddam militia, and the deposed and once-feared security forces.
Beyond that, Bremer charged that Iraqi impatience with American inability to quickly return the country to a more normal existence was the fault of Saddam, who left behind "one of the world's most devastated economies."
Noting a continuing shortage of diesel fuel, which he said was the work of sabotage attacks on refineries, Bremer pleaded with attackers to think about fellow Iraqis waiting in the blistering heat for buses that ran late or never came.
Also Saturday, the military said a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded Friday in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on their convoy east of Baghdad.
That death brought to at least 52 the number of American soldiers killed in combat since May 1 when President Bush (news - web sites) declared major fighting over. So far, 167 Americans have died in combat in this Iraq war, 20 more than in the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).
The Arab satellite television broadcaster Al-Jazeera reported that another U.S. soldier also died Saturday morning in an assault north of the capital, but the military had no details on that.
Insurgents have increasingly turned to attacking passing American convoys with remote-controlled bombs — as they did Saturday in Tikrit.
"I think there's some connection to the fact that we dropped off the remains of Odai and Qusai today. That has probably something to do with it," Russell said.
Despite the attacks, there was no widespread violence against U.S. troops in Tikrit — as feared — though al-Uja residents criticized the U.S. military for not burying the bodies earlier.
"Burying them is just giving them their rights," student Ali Ahmad said.
The Tigris River city of Tikrit remains one of the least pacified areas in the country. It sits squarely in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad, where remnants of Saddam loyalists have conducted a guerrilla war against American occupation forces.
The U.S. military also announced Saturday that U.S. soldiers firing in self-defense had killed a woman Friday who was standing near where attackers dropped an explosive from an overpass onto a U.S. convoy below.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press reporters D'arcy Doran in Tikrit, Jamie Tarabay in Baghdad and Sabah Jerges in al-Uja contributed to this report.
For the record, we lost 7 brave troops last week - 5 to hostile fire, 14 others were wounded - in a nation the size of California with 150,000 troops on the ground.
AP doesn't bother informing the world about our security successes, either. This isn't journalism. AP is misreporting the war daily - and making our work more difficult and dangerous. Saddam couldn't have asked for a better showing from AMERICA's mainstream press over the past four months.
Nevertheless, President Bush has to be prepared to answer the question, "What are we getting in return for all of this? At what point does that return become too costly in terms of lives lost?"
Dismissing them as the results of querilla tactics won't work; the tactics, guerilla or not, will still be killing Americans.
8 Last week in Iraq - a recap of our military's outstanding security efforts - CENTCOM | 8/02/03
Did you read that? DOZENS! What kind of sampling error is there when the polling population is DOZENS? Out of how many millions?
So what kind of beef can these dozens of Iraqis have with us, when the SOP of their country's military (in those rare instances where they won) was a deliberate campaign of rape, pillage, and murder of the defeated enemy?
Maybe our kid gloves aren't soft enough for their delicate sensibilities.
The End of Ugly and Queasy - L.T. SMASH - LIVE FROM THE SANDBOX
They refused to surrender, so the Army
brought in the heavy artillery. Fortunately, when it was all over there was still enough of their bodies left to identify.It’s true that they weren’t the nicest of boys, but we don’t want to be vindictive. We understand that local traditions demand that they be buried as soon as is practical, and we’re willing to turn what's left of the boys over for proper disposal.
But we don’t want their bodies to be defiled by Iraqis seeking retribution, so we’ll just hold on to them until their Dad comes to pick them up—and allows us to express our sincere condolences. They’ll be at the Saddam Baghdad International Airport until then.
Drop by anytime, Saddam. We’ll be waiting for you.
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