This raises an interesting question: what were 'Uday and Qusay doing in Mosul?
While I applaud your cynical nature: it was a raid, from what it looks like. Could very well be they had no other options than to return fire.
“They” as in, the US troops, of course.
I don’t see the point in going after his sons.
Maybe they would want to try Osama’s sons/daughters, of which he has about 50…?
Hmmm… although it’s obviously no great loss to humanity, I’ve read that there were just 4 bodies recovered from the building, obviously including those of Messrs. Hussein.
Two hundred troops, plus helicopters, to get just 4 bad guys?
In the face of that, I can’t believe the US had any intention of taking them alive. And that does seem fundamentally wrong.
I guess that they’re sure. I’m certainly not going to cry over these two scumbags, but I’ve got to wonder if this is going to hurt us in the long run. And I’m kinda ticked that they killed the teenager.
I also wonder whether this will cause the attacks on US soldiers to decrease or increase. I’m hoping for the former, but my instincts tell me to expect the latter.
You know that Saddam is planning revenge for this. If I were Bush, I’d keep those two daughters under really, really, really heavy guard from now on.
Yes?
Just out of curiousity, how do we have their DNA?
Diceman, brr. I don’t like the guy, but I think you might be right. Brr.
Handy, most of OBL’s family hasn’t been trained to take over Al Queda. The Husseins were.
Death sucks, no matter who it is; however, war sucks. I won’t be shooting off any fireworks tonight, but I won’t be crying either.
I don’t think this war has ever really been about what anyone in Iraq has done specifically to the US. With the embarrassing WMD justifications moot, it’s evident the only purpose of the war was eliminating the Baathist regime.
Uday and Qusay were not very nice characters.
Qusay was essentially Saddam’s #2 dude, and was in control of the various internal security factions in Iraq. He was the commanding officer of the Republican Guard. He was responsible for mass genocides of Shiites after the 1991 war.
Uday was a psychotic nutcase. He was the commander of the Saddam Fadayeen, which used innocent Iraqis as human shields as standard procedure. He is reported to have murdered dozens of people for no particular reason, raped perhaps hundreds of women, and collected dozens of fancy cars and never drove them. The fiend.
Not only were they trained to take over but the both ran major portions of Saddam’s government. They ran the media and the Olympic committee among other things.
I would have liked to see the new Iraqi government try and execute them but this’ll do.
I watched a bit of a special on the History Channel about the Brothers Grim…er, Hussein last night, and apparently Uday was convinced when in charge of the Olympic committee that Iraqi athletes had to win EVERYTHING, all the time. So when they didn’t, he had a special basement dungeon prison he’d lock them up in, beat them, shoot them (one was showing off his bullet scars), and as a special “reward” for the soccer team, when it lost locked the players up in metal coffin-sized boxes out in the hot sun for hours.
At that point I was so sickened I changed the channel. Thank God they got the bastard.
Wolfian: I opposed the war, and I can’t stand Bush, but I can’t shake the feeling that a Cloud Of Doom just formed over Bush’s family. I keep imagining the twins walking out of a store somewhere, with a couple of Secret Service guys in tow, when all of a sudden a van pulls up and a guy pokes an AK-47 out the window… 
I think you’re reading it completely wrong. You only need a small force to kill everyone in the building, hell, an Apache could stand off and deliver 8 Hellfire missiles without any effort at all. A large number of troops is what you need if you’re trying to contain the people in the building so you can capture them. That, plus the fact that the standoff took hours argues strongly that capture was the intent.
After a while, however, if the people inside refuse to surrender and keep attacking the troops outside, what are you gonna do?
I’m not losing any sleep. They were both viscious, sadistic bastards. The world is a better place tonight. If it were up to me, I’d throw their bodies to the Iraqi people and let them tear them to bits.
Two down, one to go . . .
It took them 6 hours as well as a couple missles and gernades to end the firefight. Sounds like the Brothers Hussien had no intention of being taken alive, and probably had a fair amount of security. I don’t take it would take 6 hours to kill 4 guys.
I disagree. I’m sure they’d like nothing better then to take them alive and hook a car battery to Uday’s balls, but sometimes capture just isn’t an option.
They were major league assholes by any sense of the word, and both were major leaders of Saddam’s regieme. Uday reportly had “Torture of prisoners” as a hobby.
Besides, Saddam has three other kids you hear nothing about. Something tells me they weren’t invovled in the family business.
“Look how the Massacured my Boys!”-Saddam Hussien, as Vito Corleone.
Well, you have to admit there is a resemblence between the way the Hussien boys died and Sonny’s Death on the Causeway.