WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is hoping these gruesome photographs will mark a turning point in Iraq.
They are the corpses of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, who were killed in a marathon firefight with U.S. troops in Mosul on Tuesday.
With this graphic proof that the Butcher of Baghdad’s two monstrous offspring will no longer continue their reign of terror, the White House says it’s getting safer for the wary Iraqi people to move past the climate of fear that has dominated their lives.
“Saddam Hussein’s sons were responsible for torture, for maiming innocent citizens and for the murders of countless Iraqis,” President Bush said in a speech in Philadelphia a few minutes after the Pentagon released the photographs.
“And now, more than ever, the Iraqi people can know the former regime is gone and is not coming back,” he added.
The Pentagon released four photographs of the severely bruised, blood-spattered faces of the dead brothers along with X-rays of the titanium femur implants that in 1996 were inserted in Uday’s leg to treat injuries he suffered in an assassination attempt.
The photos show the Hussein brothers – once arrogant and vain – had grown beards, possibly to disguise themselves during the intensive manhunt for them following the fall of Baghdad. Uday had shaved his head. Qusay had grown his hair.
The photos do not make clear how the brothers died. The Pentagon says they were killed in an anti-tank missile attack. They were found dead in the bathroom of a villa on which U.S. troops had converged.
But some have speculated the wounds – which include a large hole on one side of Uday’s head – indicate the possibility they killed themselves rather than surrender.
The decision by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to make public the after-death photographs comes despite a longstanding Pentagon policy to bitterly protest when the bodies of American soldiers are shown to the media in conflicts.
With Post Wire Services