MSNBC reporting them dead, as per DoD
Given their key roles as Saddam’s henchmen, one might think that the resistance had suffered a serious blow. Perhaps not, if one thinks the resistance is more volunteer and homegrown. I’m not sure.
Makes no difference. ‘US occupying troops out’ is the rallying call, not ‘We want Saddam back’.
<Aside>
I know they were numero two and three on the ‘Most Wanted’ /this country ain’t big enough fer . . . posters, but I can’t seem to recall exactly why the US military deemed them so.
Given the absence orf WMD or links to terrorism, what were the outstanding charges against them, human rights abuses, rape maybe ?
</Aside>
Little difference. Maybe a bit of an uptick in anti-American attacks as revenge, but the Hussein Boys do not appear to have been particularly relevant to much of anything. Killing or capturing Saddam would be somewhat more beneficial, but I suspect that the current unpleasantness has a lot more to do with pro-Iraq, pro-Muslim, and anti-American sentiment than it does with any love of or support for Saddam himself.
From London_Calling
Got a cite for that or is that just your general impression? This isn’t me being snotty, I just haven’t heard much about general protests by the population at large over there. My impression has been a small minority of protesters, a smaller minority of militants, and the majority just watching from the sidelines to see what happens. If you have some cites that show a different picture, I’d really appreciate it.
As to the OP, I’d say it has major ramifications. A lot of the population over there still is in fear of the old regime. I think a lot of people are standing back and waiting to see what will happen finally when the dust clears. With these two gone, I think that some of that fear will be further put to rest. The last straw for the old regime would be if they manage to catch/wack SH himself.
If nothing else, young women and small farm animals should be breathing a sigh of relief that Odai is out of the picture at least…
-XT
Uday was the head of a Feyadeen group, controlled a lot of Iraq’s media, and was head of the Olympic committee. He was also fond of killing people for fun.
Qusay was head of Iraqi intelligence and the Republican Guard.
Domestically, this news trumps the Democratic political strategy of complaining about various aspects of the Iraq war. Most Americans are less interested in some hypothetical question about African uranium than they are about the current reality of the killing of these two butchers.
Over the next year there will be more good news than bad news from Iraq, because we won. We are in the mopping-up stage. We will find out what happened to the stores of WMDs. Iraqi democracy will make some degree of progress. The Iraqi economy will make some degree of progress. The guerrilla attacks will lessen.
To be politically effective, the Dems need to look forward and offer a more attractive alternative strategy based on where we are today.
I find this line of thought to be profoundly disturbing. Do you believe the American people care more about our ability to kill people than about why we kill them?
Huh? How did you get that out of what december wrote?
This could be a major boost for the US in terms of how the Average Iraqi views us. I’ve read reports that say Iraqis are ambivalent or hostile to our actions in part because they’re still not convinced Saddam isn’t coming back. If that’s the case, then this will give them some cause for cheer. Not as as if Saddam was caught or killed, of course, but still something. Uday and Qusay were universally loathed and feared, and with good reason. To call them monsters seems somehow inadequate, and to refer to their actions as atrocities fails to capture the sheer horror of which they were capable. They’re gone, and people will rejoice.
However, any goodwill generated by the slaying of these beasts will be short-lived if we don’t get the infrastructure in Iraq up and running. Yes, it’s better to be without electricity than to be in fear for your life at the hands of butchers, but such reflection only goes so far. We’re currently hauling ass to get Iraq up and running, and we need to continue hauling.
Jeff
As for myself, I was wobbling (embarrasingly so) from hawkish stance to give the inspectors more time. I eventually decided that since there was an opportunity to get rid of one of the world’s worst regimes we should take the chance. I don’t think it’s fair to view the casualties of the war outside of the context of the body count Saddam’s regime had already compiled, and was sure to add to.
OTOH, given the administration’s seeming enthusiasm for the war I was disconcerted by the, IMO, undermanned and overly ambitious warplan. Overly ambitious in the sense that the plan was to fight the whole Iraqi military with a few heavy combat divisions. The borders, alleged WMD sites, along with most of the other critical targets (including Tuwaitha, the largest known nuclear site) were left unguarded for the most part, presumably allowing unfettered looting by Baathist loyalists, terrorists, Islamic militants, or anybody for that matter. By the way–I whin(g?)ed as we watched the statue fall down–Saddam and his closest associates got away and we didn’t have a surrender agreement. I haven’t considered the war over since it ended 
. I still don’t, but this is a big step.
U & Q being dead is progress for the reasons Captain Amazing pointed out. From an organizational chart standpoint some big boxes just got crossed off. Saddam had people terrorized, Uday and Qusay were an integral part of that. Like other brutal dictators before him, I’d expect that some people will need to see Saddam’s corpse before they would ever feel free to speak against or oppose Saddam. Seeing Uday and Qusay dead (plus one of Saddam’s grandsons and a body guard, I just heard) should have a similar, albeit lessened, effect.
december wrote:
I may be wrong, but I am assuming that the “various aspects of the Iraq war” that Democrats (and others) are complaining about include details like Iraq’s phantom NBC weapons, its lack of demonstrable links to Al-Qaa:ada, and other problems with the Bush Administration’s justification for the war. december seems to believe that such issues are trivial compared to the deaths of two enemy leaders - that why we went to war is irrelevant so long as we can prosecute the war effectively.
He neglects, or believes the voting public will neglect, the fact that we did not go to war to kill 'Uday and Qusay. We killed 'Uday and Qusay because we went to war.
I’m glad that 'Uday and Qusay are dead, but their deaths are not ends in themselves. They are only means to the end of a more effective prosecution of the Iraq war. Similarly, the Iraq war was supposed to be only a means to larger political ends for the United States: the elimination of hostile NBC weapons and the rollback of Islamist terrorism. If we lose site of those ultimate political ends, the whole exercise becomes meaningless.
While Saddam may yet still be alive , he was reported to be in a very precarious mental state ,rather than being his jolly old self. U and Q may have been the actual leaders of the resistance movement , who were stupid enough to be in the same place.
This is just the start, as there should have been more than 4 people in that house , to be able to hold off the screamin eagles for 3 hours. I believe that there may have been some negotiations going on at the same time , for the siege to have lasted that long.
In the short run , probably a lot of violence towards american forces ,anything that was planned is in motion and who ever is left holdin the ropes may decide that he needs a big win , to cement his position.
The long run , the area is more than along the way to being pacified, depending on who had the coin to pay these guerillas , that may have dried up with the death of the kids.
Declan
I wonder if it would actually be good to kill Saddam and his sons. While they are still around the Iraqi people probably fear them returning, but if we manage to kill them will the resistance to America still be viewed as Saddam trying to return to power?
Right now Saddam could be why people are still neutral on the resistance, but what if it gets a new face that promises democracy?
I must have put it badly. I was talking about the motivations of only those currently driven to action against the US forces, not “protesters”.
It is a “general feeling” gleaned from reports of how the general population is said to feel at present, but then it has to be as the US forces aren’t capturing the ‘guerrillas’, so we can’t know any more than Mr Bush (but he seems to think they’re “Saddam loyalists”, for some reason). Instead the ‘guerrillas’ just melt back into the general population immediately after attacking.
A general impression:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3038732.stm
*“In his speech in the White House Rose Garden, President Bush spoke of “terrorists, extremists and Saddam loyalists” who have attacked US forces, intimidated Iraqis and destroyed infrastructure.
He warned of foreign fighters entering Iraq, al-Qaeda-related groups waiting to strike and former Iraqi officials “who will stop at nothing” to recover power.
And, he said: “These groups believe they… (will) cause us to leave Iraq before freedom is fully established.”
That is not quite how many Iraqis see it. <continues>”*
Anyone help me out with the charges/offences that explain why they were number’s two and three on the US Chart ?
[ul]
[li]Will the deaths of Uday and Qusay stop attacks on American forces? No.[/li][li]Will the deaths of Uday and Qusay bring the troops home sooner? No.[/li][li]Will the deaths of Uday and Qusay reduce the number of troops needed in Iraq? No.[/li][li]Will the deaths of Uday and Qusay reduce the $1-billion-a-week cost of this occupation? No.[/li][li]Will the deaths of Uday and Qusay give the United States a justifiable reason for invading Iraq? No.[/li][li]Will the deaths of Uday and Qusay improve the United States’ standing with the rest of the world? No.[/li][/ul]
While december may be nurturing wet dreams about how U&Q’s deaths are a windfall for the Bush Administration, the truth is that this event will have little to no effect on all the anchors currently dragging down this damn fool war. This turn of events is only a minor variation of “We took down Saddam because he was an evil dude” – feel-good jingoism for the folks who don’t like to think, but nothing of significance for the rest of us.
Does anybody have any actual proof that Uday and Qusay were commanding and controlling anything at all? These guys were hiding in fear of their lives. It seems rather unlikely to me that they were taking much risk of exposing themselves by giving orders to the guerillas about how to fight their continuing war.
All of rjung’s bullet points above could just as easily have been said of the Americans’ killing of Admiral Yamamoto sixty years before–if one took an equally shortsighted view of things at the time.
Yeah, but did killing Yamamoto make a dime’s worth of difference in the war against Japan?
Reliable sources tell me Uday was in charge of the vacuum cleaner and Qusay the coffee machine. Last Intel reports conclusively demonstrated they planned on occupying the living room after 10.00pm, contrary to house rules.
There are at least some of the opinion that this is an important development:
**