Some people are starting to ask some fairly embarrassing questions about the Army's shoot 'em up with Saddam's boys:
As details became clearer of the raid that eliminated what the U.S. military calls High Value Targets (HVTs) Nos. 2 and 3, a lot of people in the intelligence community were left wondering: why weren’t they just taken alive? ...The whole operation was a cockup,” said a British intelligence officer. “There was no need to go after four lightly armed men with such overwhelming firepower. They would have been much more useful alive.” ...
“Bollocks,” said one former Special Forces soldier. “A SWAT team could have taken them. It didn’t need a company” ....
And so on.
Now I have absolutely no moral qualms about turning Uday and Qusay into the devil's firewood. Whatever happened to them in that house in Mosul was just an infinitesimal fraction of the torment they deserved. One can only hope that Lucifer will make good the deficiency.
But there's no question that a public trial, either in Iraq or at the Hague, would have done far more to exorcise the Hussein family's own demonic presence here on earth -- and, by the way, helped bolster the humanitarian case for invading Iraq.
The great thing about trials is that they reveal sadistic monsters like the Husseins for the pathetic little creeps they really are. Anyone who's seen footage of Milosevic on trial at the Hague -- or the Nazi grandees in the dock at Nuremberg in their cheap suits and bad haircuts -- should understand what I mean.
A good war crimes trial strips the tyrant of his aura before it executes or imprisons him. In a strange way, it humanizes him, reversing the process by which he dehumanized both himself and his victims. I know this will sound strange, but a proper show trial (and that is what war crimes trials really are) is a benign version of the process described by O'Brien in 1984:
"We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back ... We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves."
O'Brien promised that the Party would jerk Winston Smith clean out of history before it shot him. But the legitimate goal of a war crimes trial is to jerk the defendent back in to history -- to make him (or her) once again the object, not the subject, of society's laws.
But when the prosecutor's own hands are dirty ... ah, well, that changes things, doesn't it? Then the goal of the process isn't to reveal, but to conceal -- and as quickly and efficiently as possible. Cromwell and the French Convention put their tyrants on trial; Lenin had his shot in a basement. This tells you something about the differences between their revolutions.
It's understandable, really, why the Bush administration would prefer to remove the Husseins from history, rather than put them back in it. The Hussein brothers may not have known as much as their father about the full history of America's relationship with Iraq, but they probably knew enough to make a public show trial a very, ah, revealing affair. Consider these scraps of known information:
One awkward find was a cache of missiles that were made in the United States. Though details of the discovery are classified, sources in Washington say that military and intelligence agencies launched an urgent investigation to find out how the weapons got to Iraq and whether American firms might have violated U.N. embargoes and U.S. laws. Recently the inquiry was abandoned when convincing evidence turned up that the missiles had been exported legally from the United States to Iraq in the years before the first gulf war, when American policymakers cozied up to Saddam as a counterbalance to Iranian ayatollahs.
Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ... and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show.
We have been here for 40 days and haven't received a single part to fix broken vehicles. The good news is that we supplied the Iraqis with American equipment during the Iran war in 1982. I've looted many Special Republican Guard barracks (there is a 30 km stretch of SRG barracks between us and Tikrit) for Browning .50 Cals, in perfect condition, literally still in packing grease. We also found a stock pile of M-113s ...
Better -- at least from the administration's point of view -- that Uday and Qusay tell whatever they know to Satan, not a war crimes tribunal. That obviously goes double for their Dad.
So it looks like the Iraqis are going to have to find their catharsis somewhere else.
Download the 9-11 report, email it to Kinkos, spend a few bucks on a nice binder and please, please read it.
Or hijack the office printer. But please, please, please - don't be lazy like Bush.
You notice the 14 year old boy, who was killed, is rarly mentioned. Was he also a criminal? What would have been done with him if he were taken alive?
You notice the 14 year old boy, who was killed, is rarly mentioned. Was he also a criminal?
According to the military, he was busily firing an AK-47 at them at the time. If that's true, then it was a really bad thing for a boy to do if said boy wanted to avoid being killed.
is it just me, or did bush just create two more martyrs for a group of people who can't seem to get enough of them? the stupidity of this administration can't even be described.
While watching one of Dubya's many blabbering clips on CNN, he uttered the words, "..and Iraqis are no longer dying..." Which produced my automatic response of, "What..so we could replace them with dying Americans?"
Rhetorical question, I know, but does anyone see the irony in all of this? We are the supporters of peace, the dimplomats of democracy...yet, the thanks to him, the term "American Justice" now means traveling around the globe killing everyone on his little list. Reminds me of Steve Buscemi's character in Adam Sandler's "Billy Madison" with the list of 'people to kill' hanging innocently on the wall. I wonder if Dubya shares his fetish for lipstick and panty hose?
According to the military, he was busily firing an AK-47 at them at the time. If that's true, then it was a really bad thing for a boy to do if said boy wanted to avoid being killed.
If he'd been in the corner sucking his thumb he'd still be dead.
Did Saddam's sons take intimate knowledge of the Iraqi WMD to the grave??
Did Sadam's sons take intimate knowledge of Haliburton contracts during the period of UN sanctions, Bushco contacts, or other relevant info to the grave??
It wasn't their testimony about WMDs that had Bush and Cheney frightened. It was the details of Iraq's dealings with Halliburton during the years of sanctions that needed to be buried.
It just shows, again, what the priorities of this administration are.
Truth is less important political homogeneity.
Justice matters less than vengeance - particularly ironic given the original title of the first phase of the War on Terror.
Security - actually keeping people safe - is less important than the impression of security.
Having ethics is less important than insisting loudly that you have ethics.
I guess I could go on, but...
L
That kid was probably in as bad a situation as I can think of. Fight the infidel and they'll kill you. Refuse and the Brothers Hussein will kill you. Hide, and you'll be killed by falling rubble when the building collapses.
Nope, there was no hope for that kid but to become a martyr.
L
The reality must be nature abhors a vacuum...ergo
the leadership of the political arena calls for
a selection process...Breemer and his USA big business deals found to be PreWar designs from
Cheney Inc. may well lose any traction if as I
think the Iraqis must nationalize to insure fair
disbursment of Iraqi resources...military and
unconventional forces engaged in warfare must be
negociated with...the Afgani model is a realistic
way...cubic dollars and four wheel drive trucks
will go further than shake downs and false
imprisonment...the threat of Gitmo only makes
surrender less likely...dead leaders mean new
leaders...on one hand the USA tells the world
no WMD's unless we sell them to you...then comes
around and bombs you for having what the USA sold,
solid market penetration...no electicity, no
water works, now who could have bombed the works?
aWol wants new small nukes to bunker bust...does
this need ethical reflection? Waco showed what happens when you try to walk into machinegun fire
the Special Forces need to talk to the field commander that sent grunts up the steps with a bullhorn...WACO ring a bell? It's lives for votes
in aWol's uncle Karl's World and don't turn your back...Karl's treatment of actual military veterans that oppose his minions is dishonorable
and hateful of at least one man that lost three
limbs in Vietnam...there's an up side that the
maddness will stimulate voter registration...
the orders to kill the boys came from the top...
no doubt...12 hours and 4 dead...coverup
Why does no one else find it remarkable that the 'charred bodies' of Uday and Qusay were miraculously restored to their unburned state so that photos could be taken?
Why is it that we are on the hunt for osama and saddam and their merry-men? why is the country who promotes "justice for all" and is breeding ground for the leech-like creatures known as lawyers, not trying to find these men for trial? duh, because they know too much!
if anyone believes that we are not likethis with all of the "evil-doers" than you are in the clouds. cover-up is the ultimate american way and we are on that big time.
yes, the spawns of saddam were horrible men but so is the spawn of bush, sure he might not be out raping and killing women per say, but someone is definitely getting screwed by him. i just think it is very sad that we are now witness to the blatant PR sham of showing the dead bodies. Was this not the same administration who just a few months ago blew a load when images of dead troops were released? every side is going to have their own interpretation of the situation, but isn't all human life worth the same? it is just sad that an administration representing the "greatest country in the world" has sucken to a level of ignorance.
I put this same comment (more or less) on a post at Kos. I don't care if the 14-year-old was holding a nuclear bomb in his pants. He was a CHILD who probably thought he was getting to play like a grownup, fighting with his dad and using a real gun instead of a squirt pistol. If Q & U used him as they used so many others, he was not in a position to argue and they were evil creeps anyway -- but what's OUR excuse for shooting him down?
Did Saddam's sons take intimate knowledge of the Iraqi WMD to the grave?? Could the US have extracted this valuable information from them before it falls into terrorist hands?? Oh, now I remember, Wolfy says the WMD doesn't matter anymore.