Here's the SAW the Screaming Eagle's "Nip n Tuck" Unit used for de-constructive elective cosmetic surgery........BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
What the heck does that mean? Why the suicide comment? Reuters is getting weirder.
Reuters Sees Baghdad Bodies, Look Like Saddam Sons
Fri July 25, 2003 07:41 AM ETBAGHDAD (Reuters) - Officials from the U.S.-led administration in Iraq showed independent journalists two corpses on Friday that Washington says it is sure are the bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons.
"I've been shown the bodies and they do appear to be those of Uday and Qusay," Reuters correspondent Andrew Marshall said from a makeshift, tented U.S. military morgue at Baghdad's international airport.
U.S. officials say they are certain that their troops killed the hated brothers in rocket strikes on a villa in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday. It is keen to convince Iraqis they no longer have any reason to fear the former ruling family but many say they remain unconvinced by photographs.
U.S. officials said there was no evidence the sons committed suicide. A U.S. military official said the bodies had undergone post-mortem "facial reconstruction."
Does that mean they had to scrape half their faces off the wall and slap them back on with a little Krazy Glue?
That's just a polite way of saying that soldiers of the 101st kicked their lifeless faces in.
Just like Nancy Pelosi.
Here's the SAW the Screaming Eagle's "Nip n Tuck" Unit used for de-constructive elective cosmetic surgery........BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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U.S. Displays Bodies That Look Like Saddam's Sons
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July 25 — By Andrew Marshall BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Striving to convince fearful Iraqis that Saddam Hussein's sons are dead, U.S. officials showed Reuters and other journalists two bodies Friday that Washington says it is certain are those of Uday and Qusay. But unlike grisly, blood spattered photographs published by the U.S. military earlier, the faces had been touched up and shaved to make them more closely resemble the brothers in life -- a U.S. official insisted the aim was not to deceive. |
About 15 journalists saw two corpses laid out in a tented military morgue. They did look like the two brothers, whom U.S. troops said they killed in a raid in Mosul Tuesday.
The face of Uday, 39, had been repaired. The U.S. pictures showed wounds that officers said were sustained in the siege of a villa in the northern city, where he and his younger brother went down fighting an overwhelming force firing rockets.
"The two bodies have undergone facial reconstruction with morticians putty to make them resemble as closely as possible the faces of the brothers when they were alive," a U.S. military official said. He called it standard practice, although such post-mortem work is frowned on by most Muslims.
U.S. officials have yet to decide how the bodies will be disposed of, another possible controversy in the light of strict Muslim traditions on burial.
Qusay's uncharacteristic beard, visible in the original U.S. photographs, had been shaved off but a mustache, which he normally wore, had been left. The gaping wound in Uday's face, visible in the pictures, was gone but a hole in the top of his head was still visible to reporters.
U.S. officials said they had ruled out earlier speculation that he might have shot himself in the head to avoid capture.
HARD TO CONVINCE
Despite the earlier photographs, published Thursday, many Iraqis, brought up on the official lies of the Saddam decades and mistrustful of their American occupiers, were unconvinced.
Many say they cannot relax until they know Saddam himself, now in hiding with $25 million on his head, is dead.
Hence the decision to bus some 15 independent journalists including television cameramen and photographers to view the bodies in a small, air-conditioned beige tent at the airport -- formerly Saddam International and now a U.S. military base.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he ordered the release of the pictures -- despite questions about its morality and accusations of hypocrisy -- to help convince frightened Iraqis that Saddam's reign was truly over, despite taped messages of defiance apparently issued by Saddam from hiding.
Americans hope that will prompt more of them to cooperate with U.S. troops and undermine daily guerrilla attacks that they blame on die-hard Saddam loyalists. Attacks have killed 44 soldiers since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.
But Iraqi analysts warn that other groups with no loyalty to Saddam may be involved in some of the attacks, including Islamic militants and nationalists giving vent to widespread resentment at the American takeover of their oil-rich country.
"These two sons of Saddam were responsible for hundreds and hundreds of people being tortured and maimed and murdered," President Bush said Thursday.
"And now the Iraqi people have seen clearly the intent of the United States to make sure that they are free and to make sure that the Saddam regime never returns again to Iraq."
DENTAL RECORDS
Yet some Iraqis say they would feel safe only if they saw for themselves the bodies of Uday, a feared rapist and torturer, and Qusay, 37, Saddam's calculating heir apparent. Others, including members of the fledgling self-rule body the Governing Council, lament the sons cannot now stand trial.
U.S. commanders have said four former aides, including Saddam's influential former presidential secretary, had identified the bodies. They also had perfect or near perfect matches on dental records and surgical X-rays.
The U.S. military also issued X-ray slides Thursday to show a match between the body and surgery carried out on Uday's legs after an assassination attempt in 1996. They declined to say where the records came from. Autopsies are planned.
Two other people were found dead in the Mosul villa after local people said the householder, a rich businessman with ties to the Saddam family, had betrayed them to the Americans. The informant stands to make up to $30 million in bounty money.
U.S. officials say one corpse is probably that of a bodyguard, the other possibly of Qusay's teenage son. Those bodies were not produced to journalists Friday.
Members of the Governing Council, appointed by the occupying authorities and comprising respected community leaders, were also shown the bodies Thursday.
Iraqi newspapers were not available in Baghdad Friday morning as local people attended weekly prayers at mosques. But editors said they would publish the photographs Saturday.
Many Iraqis, no matter how deeply they loathe Saddam and his family, find it hard to believe anything the Americans say and conspiracy theories are rife across the Arab world.
Businessman Khalil Ali said photographs meant nothing.
"They should have been hung up on poles in a square in Baghdad so all Iraqis could see them," he said. "Then they should have died as people ate them alive."
Whatever gratitude many Iraqis feel for the removal of Saddam, however, is often overshadowed in everyday remarks by a resentment at the heavily armored patrols along their streets.
A Reuters photographer watched troops storm a house on Baghdad's outskirts overnight, rounding up 16 men at gunpoint. Two of them, they believed, were behind a deadly ambush in the capital Monday. But the soldiers were unsure which two.