editorial

The deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons and heirs, Uday and Qusay Hussein, are controversial mostly for the wrong reasons and raise a number of important questions that are mostly ignored by the mainstream corporate news media.

Was it a mistake to show the corpses to the world media? That's a valid set of political and aesthetic questions.

What's not valid is any comparison to the former Iraqi regime's display of prisoners of war before video cameras misses the point. Although it might be in bad taste, it doesn't violate the Geneva Conventions to show the dead. On the other hand, it is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions to expose living prisoners to public curiosity.

If showing the bodies convinces supporters of the old regime to quit fighting, allows other Iraqis to live with less fear, or boosts the morale of the US and allied troops, then the Bush administration may have made a wise decision. If the display disgusts people at home or abroad, then it may have been a blunder. It has probably done all of those things, so it becomes a question of balance in the propaganda sphere.

The decision to show or not show the bodies, however, is one of the less important questions raised by the deaths.

Whether the brothers were given any reasonable chance to surrender, and whether there was any serious consideration given to a sneak attack that could have taken them alive, are weightier matters. If there actually are weapons of mass destruction hidden somewhere, or if the Hussein brothers were still leading resistance to the invaders, then the failure to take them alive was something of an intelligence setback. If US policy is to take no prisoners, or if that is perceived to be the case, then it also means that those who resist will be motivated to fight to the death and take as many Americans as possible with them.

That said, we should notice that hardly anyone is mourning these guys. Not even their own family is unanimous on the question, considering Uday's personal role in the murders of his sisters' husbands, and considering that the guy who sold Uday and Qusay to their enemies most probably is the owner of the house in which they died, who is one of their father's cousins.

Canadian journalist Patrick Graham describes Uday as "a spoiled rich kid with psychotic tendencies and enormous power." Part of that power was control over many of Iraq's communications media and the Iraqi Journalists' Union. Another part of Uday's power, which ought to give the International Olympic Committee pause for reflection, was his post at the top of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, from which he meted out sadistic punishments to athletes who displeased him.

Qusay, a drunkard who ran the former regime's atrocious prisons, took charge of the bloody repression of the Shiites after the first Gulf War. In order to accomplish that task, he committed one of history's great environmental crimes, draining the southern marshes in order to destroy the local population's ancient way of life.

These men lived by violence and betrayal, and it's rough justice that they died that way too.

But it appears that they were hiding, not fighting, when the American troops surrounded them. If Uday, the head of the Saddam Fedayeen, and Qusay, the old regime's security chief, were not directing the resistance --- and it seems they weren't --- then that fact raises enormous questions.

Is the Bush administration to be believed when it characterizes those who are ambushing and killing American soldiers as "Saddam Hussein loyalists?" Or is that just an epithet used to conceal a grassroots guerrilla resistance by people who didn't support Saddam's regime but won't accept a foreign occupation? If the people who are killing American soldiers are anti- Saddam, then Uday's and Qusay's deaths actually help the leaders of the anti-American guerrilla resistance by removing rivals from the picture. On the other hand, if the resistance really is a remnant of the old regime then the removal of Saddam's heirs is a significant political victory for the occupying forces.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

Winston Churchill

The candidate has become relatively unimportant as long as he can be properly managed. The candidate must be bright enough to handle the material furnished to him, but not too intelligent, because there is always the danger that an intelligent candidate may come up with unpopular or controversial ideas of his own, and thereby destroy a carefully contrived campaign strategy.

Zolton Ferency

Well behaved women rarely make history.

Laura Conners

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