Saddam's Sons Killed!!!
 

General: Saddam's Sons Killed in Raid
4 minutes ago Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo!


By SARMAD JALAL, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s sons Odai and Qusai were killed in a six-hour firefight Tuesday when U.S. forces surrounded and then stormed a palatial villa in this northern Iraqi town, a senior American general said.

"We are certain that Odai and Qusai were killed today," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez at a news conference in Baghdad.

"They died in a fierce gunbattle," Sanchez added.

He told reporters that soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were working on a tip from an Iraqi informant that the sons were present in the house.

When troops approached the building, gunmen inside opened fire with small arms. The "suspects barricaded themselves in the house" and "resisted fiercely," he said.

I wonder what repercussions will come from this.

Am I the person that will be skeptical of this until I see/hear DNA proof or something of the sort? Just because one of OUR generals say "they are dead", doesn't mean that they REALLY are.

Could this be a ploy of the Bush Adm. to "save face" in the wake of all the current "mis-information" allegations? I just find it hard to believe that all of a sudden, Sadaam's son come up dead at a time when the Bush Adm. is being heavily scrutinized/criticized for this war and the fact that they havent' found a WMD or Sadaam.


I dunno....


I do hope there are no reprecussions. :(

Jus' seems a lil' too convienient, don't it? I guess it's Bush's version of "Wag the Dog: Iraqi Style."

CTFU. After all, Gorgie Dubya Boosh :rolleyes: needs something to run on. And too many people are distracted from the things that really affect us, particularly jobs, the economy and education.

ST, nonpartisan who thinks el presidente americano isn't all that.

They should have asked them where their father....

No you are not the only one, I can't believe this is our president, how do we know they are dead anyway? I need to see a body before I buy it.

I believe this just like I believe that Santa Claus really is coming to town.

A friend :cool: told me that they are bringing the bodies to America for autopsies. Has anyone else heard this??

i guess those dead bodies can be added to all the innocents that US has killed throughout the years and those "missing" WMD's that are supposedly in Iraq and Iran.

Not all of us, shoot cutting the Pell Grant, job market sux, etc. etc. :mad: :o

See, this is why I come to AKA Avenue, because people here think. Over in Chit Chat they're talking about about the same thing and people are saying things like the bodies should be paraded down 5th Avenue in New York City. People just eat whatever the Bush administration says like a newborn sucking its mothers teat.

***SMH*** I have not read their thread. . . I heard about this yesterday on my lunch hour and I was just like hmmm SOMETHING JUST AIN'T RIGHT!! His sons might be dead but Saddam has others in his arsenal. . . every shut eye ain't sleep.

Ditto!!!!

I heard this morning on Good Morning America that the Bush Adm. is supposed to release pictures of their bodies to the Iraq people to prove that they are dead.

Now, if Sadaam had look-a-llikes, why wouldn't his sons?

Good point...

They said that they have been identified by fingerprints and dental records...

We'll see.

sorry to intrude on your forum, but i really can't handle what people were saying in chit chat... i don't get some people's thoughts at times..

anyways, this is exactly what i have been thinking since i heard that they have supposedly been killed. i won't believe it until they have the dna to back it up. at this point, i can't believe anything the bush administration is saying, with all the reports that information was exaggerated, fudged, etc to try to get people to believe that the war in iraq was the best thing to do. and at this point, i'm quite worried that some retalliation will take place.

It's terrible, isn't it? I'm always disturbed by how jingoistic some of the "others" can be...

Okay, am I just silly, or what happened to catching bin Laden? True, WMD are important and scary...but bin Laden was capable of achieving terrible things on US soil w/o the WMD.

I need to pay a trip to Chit Chat. They sound like they're trippin' over there. I want to see some DNA tests myself. The Bush administration needs to be shut down.

Don't waste your time. I looked at that thread, and it contains more than a bit of juvenilia and name-calling stirred up by one poster who has a vested interest in military situations.


BTW, I would also like to see the DNA results on these bodies.

ETA: I made the suggestion because I've been on GC a while and I just find it pointless to cyber-argue with people who won't listen and have a closed mind. I'd rather save my arguments for people whom I know personally.

Yeah, what ever happened to bin Laden?

And what about North Korea? I'm sayin'!?!?!?

I don't know how I feel about Saddam's Sons being dead. Maybe its because I am a pacifist or because my school just lost a student in this war, but I don't celebrate the thought of anyone's sons being dead regardless of who they are.

But on that note, if they really are dead and Saddam is really alive. Then we should be hearing from him VERY soon.

I guess my only hope is that Saddam and Bin Ladden aren't hanging out together somewhere...


ETA: I tried to look at the pictures... but lets just say I couldn't make it past the second one. They look sic...

Sons' Bodies May Have 20 Bullet Wounds
39 minutes ago

By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military showed reporters the bodies of Odai and Qusai Hussein on Friday and said each body contained more than 20 bullet wounds. The faces had been partly reconstructed to appear as lifelike as possible. :eek:


The display of the bodies, seen by an Associated Press reporter, came after still photographs released Thursday failed to convince many Iraqi civilians the brothers were really dead.


Odai's beard had been trimmed to the length he had worn it in life. Qusai's beard was shaved off and he had only a mustache — his trademark. The faces appeared waxy and heavily made up.


Morticians removed a large gash that had cut across the middle of Odai's face. Odai's abdomen had been riddled with bullets, and the torsos of both brothers bore large Y-shaped incisions.


Autopsy incisions were also visible on Odai's left leg, where doctors removed an 8-inch long bar that had been inserted after a 1996 assassination attempt. A piece of leg bone taken out with the bar was wrapped in plastic and lying next to his body on the gurney.


Each brother also had multiple scrapes, abrasions and burns. Odai was believed to have died from a head injury caused by a blunt object. Qusai had two bullet wounds to his head, in and just behind his right ear, doctors and medical officials said. They said they did not think the wounds were self-inflicted.


U.S. officials who handled the corpses said the brothers were made to look as lifelike as possible, a standard military procedure for all bodies.


But the reconstruction was significant because of the doubt about the still photographs, in which the brothers' faces were obscured by heavy beards, blood and gashes.


Surgeons who showed reporters the metal rod they removed from Odai's leg said the serial and model number matched data they had about it. They also displayed dental X-rays.


Odai, 39, and Qusai, 37, were killed Tuesday in a gunbattle with U.S. troops, who raided a villa in the northern city of Mosul, directed there by an Iraqi tipster.


The U.S. military had offered a $15 million reward for information leading to the capture or death of the brothers — two of the most feared men in Iraq and Nos. 2 and 3 on the American list of most-wanted Iraqis.


Saddam's sons responded to U.S. soldiers' demand to surrender with a hail of gunfire, so there was no way they could have been captured alive, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday in Washington.


Some Iraqis say they would have preferred that the sons were captured and put on trial, but Rumsfeld said there was no reason to second-guess the actions of the 101st Airborne Division troops who carried out the quick-reaction mission in Mosul.


"Given the amount of gunfire that came from that building ... it is I think obvious that there was no chance of taking them alive," the defense secretary said.


U.S. officials said the bodies would be stored in a refrigerated tent at Baghdad International Airport until a family member came forward to claim them.


The U.S. civil administration in Iraq was talking to the country's Governing Council about how to preserve the bodies according to Islamic custom, which calls for burial as soon as possible. Usually, Muslims are buried before nightfall the day they die.


U.S. medical personnel said they treated the bodies with the same respect they would accord any corpse.





A final report on the brothers' deaths was expected within six weeks, the American officials said on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. military has said a third man, believed to have been a bodyguard, also was killed by TOW missiles fired into the villa in Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq and home to many of Saddam's Baath Party loyalists.

A fourth person in the house, believed to be Qusai's teenage son Mustafa, was shot to death when troops stormed the house.

The photographs released Thursday were widely viewed on television around the world, including in Iraq. Among the complaints was that the photographs did not show the sons' full bodies.

Most papers in the capital, Baghdad, did not publish Friday, a traditional day of prayer and rest in the country. The Al Ray Al-Am ran a story about the pictures, but did not show them, opting instead to show an older color photo of Odai, the eldest son, wearing an Arab headdress, his faced crossed out with a red "X."

The photos seemed to have had little effect on Iraqi opinion.

"This is a U.S. ploy to try to break the spirit of the resistance," said Jassim al-Robai, a computer engineer, who said the photographs did not convince him the brothers were killed.

Two U.S. military photos showed a man identified as Qusai with bruises and blood spots around his eyes. That face was far more intact than the other, identified as Odai.

The face of what appeared to be Odai was severely bloodied. A gash ran from his left eye to the right corner of his mouth, and bruises and blood covered his forehead.

Both men were heavily bearded, which left some Iraqis speculating that they may have been trying to mask their identities. They had been on the run since the regime collapsed April 9.

Britain's top representative in the country, John Sawers, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio Friday that the killings dealt a blow to any hopes of Saddam sympathizers that his Baathist regime could return.

The deaths of Odai and Qusai "have been hugely celebrated here. This is a day of celebration for Iraq," Sawers said.

L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator of Iraq, told NBC's "Today" that the brothers' deaths may help American forces capture their father.

"I think the noose is certainly tightening," Bremer said. "His support circle has to be getting tighter around him."

Bremer also said the United States would continue its efforts to reconstruct Iraq, even if it has to bear most of the burden.

"When Americans undertake a great and noble cause — and that's what this is — they see it through. And we're going to see this through," Bremer said.

I'm still debating on rather I want to see the pictures or not.

Yeah, their pictures are posted in today's New York Daily News. Quite gruesome they are....

How can you display someone's autopsy and reconstruct their bodies so that it would be more "lifelike?" They showed the pictures on the news yesterday. I think that it is quite sick and horrible that they would print, post, and display pictures of DEAD people for all the world to see. I mean, we can expect such things from websites like rotten.com and others, but from reputable news sources? Come on! What is this country coming to? How can someone's death be paraded, even if they are the "enemy?"

Shalom Everyone~

RedefinedDiva, your question is on point...how can you display someone's autopsy and reconstruct their bodies to "appear" lifelike? That mess they showed today looked like a quickie from the wax museum!

OStreet, although there's been a few times I've privately rejoiced over some wicked folks in my life getting up outahere --- I agree with you, I'm not feeling the manner in which America has reduced human life/death by parading the sons on television! How would we feel if the script was flipped?

The American government/leadership need some serious prayer because this mess is sick!!!

Shalom~


Shalom08
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Tau Upsilon Omega

My opinion:

I think the photos had to be released in order to convince Iraqi citizens that they were really dead. Yes its disgusting and gory, but this is a part of the world where these things are seen all the time.
I do think it is them. If its not, I would think Saddam and his sons would be quick to submit a videotape to Arab media like Al-Jazeera.

I disagree. The proper thing to do was to get a trusted Iraqi official who could verify the deaths and pass the information along to their people. Why is it that the US needed to be convinced? We had the photos plastered on every American news
station. Also who are we to say what the Iraqi people need to be convinced. I feel as if the media showed a select few people who said they needed more proof about the deaths. Remember that it was not to long ago that we were horrorfied that our soldiers dead bodies were shown on televison.

Just so I can be lazy and not type alot of stuff already said: Ditto on everything Dedicated1 wrote .

hmmm...
Do these movies, commercials ring a bell?
Mission Impossible I &II
Face Off
Die Another Day
Shucks...diet Pepsi Commercials
even Mrs. Doubtfire :o
:rolleyes:

This mess isn't limited to entertainment.

All I know iuh..George W. better watch his back. I know there is a reason why I'm hearing these Naval planes over my head more than usual these days. :mad: :o :rolleyes: