Posted on 07/25/2003 10:06:23 AM PDT by BunnySlippers
European Newspapers Criticize US Photos Of Saddam's Sons
BERLIN (AP)--The U.S. decision to publish graphic photos of Saddam Hussein's two dead sons drew disapproval from European intellectuals and human rights groups Friday, with some critics accusing the U.S. of trying to deflect skepticism about its effort to rebuild Iraq.
Newspapers across the continent ran the pictures of Odai and Qusai Hussein, their faces bloody and swollen after the brothers were trapped and killed inside a villa in the Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday. Front-page displays were rare, though, amid debate about the ethics of showing off the No. 2 and No. 3 men on the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis.
"And when will it be their father's turn?" headlined Bild, Germany's most-read daily, which featured a color picture of the two dead sons on page 1.
While government officials generally avoided comment, criticism of the U.S. step was harsh in Germany, where the government and most of the population opposed the Iraq war and concerns about the chances of pacifying Iraq are widely debated.
Ulrich Sarcinelli, a political scientist at Koblenz-Landau University who writes about democracy and the media, speculated that the U.S. administration intended not only to dampen Iraqi fears of the remnants of Saddam's regime, but also to impress public opinion in the U.S. and the U.K.
"It appears that the photos were meant as visual and strongly emotional stimuli to act as a counterweight to the continuously growing, rationally well-founded criticism of the Iraq war," Sarcinelli told The Associated Press by telephone.
Some leading papers voiced similar sentiments, even as they published the photos. "Ugly pictures with doubtful effect," headlined Aftenposten in Oslo, Norway.
France's No. 2 daily, Le Figaro, put the photos on an inside page and most major Dutch newspapers gave them the same treatment. But many papers in France and Germany chose to write about the photos, rather than show them.
London's Daily Mirror said the pictures would shock many people. "But they are not displayed gratuitously. It is right that the people of Iraq know that Saddam's evil regime is really over, even though he still lives."
By releasing the photographs, the U.S. aimed to help convince Iraqis, especially those fighting a guerrilla war against occupying U.S. forces, that Saddam's leadership is truly defeated.
Germany faced a similar situation after World War II when rumors that Adolf Hitler was alive persisted for a time because his bones were never found after he committed suicide and his followers disposed of the body.
The images of the Hussein brothers left human rights groups dismayed, some saying the U.S. move was no better than tactics used by Saddam.
In London, Amnesty International said Friday there was no explicit prohibition in the laws of war to show pictures of dead bodies.
"However, the spirit of the rules is that the dignity of everyone, dead or alive, Iraqi, United States national, British or other, must be respected," said Kamal Samari, a spokesman for the group. "On this basis, we believe that it would have been preferable if the pictures had not been shown."
Patrick Baudouin of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights said releasing photographs of the dead brothers was unnecessary, and done primarily to satisfy a need for vengeance among the Iraqi population victimized by his regime.
"This is the kind of method Saddam Hussein used. He did this sort of thing to maintain fear," Baudouin said.
But for Denmark's largest newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, publishing the photos was a journalistic duty.
"We have decided to print these pictures as a documentation," said senior editor Jeppe Duvaa. "These kind of event have a historic value."
Not so, said Frankfurter Rundschau, a left-leaning German daily that refused to run the photos and noted in an editorial that U.S. leaders were outraged when Iraqi TV showed images of American POWs during the war.
"Human dignity is at stake," the paper said. "Regardless of the atrocities that Odai and Qusai were accused of and which were corroborated many times over, the display is a violation of the principle that the civilized world has derived from the U.S. constitution and the general reckoning with its own history."
Several international law experts said that the rules of war laid down in the Geneva Conventions gave no clear pointers for the case.
"Had Saddam Hussein's sons been captured or killed soldiers, publication of the photos would clearly have been barred under the Geneva Convention," said Hans-Joachim Heintze of the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict in Bochum, Germany.
Given the reason -- PROOF for those still following or fearing the reign of Hussein -- it was the right thing to do.
And now I'm supposed to really give a sh** what they think about America's action. If it were not for the American military, they would all have blond hair, blue eyes and be part of the master race.
Wheh you live in a glass house, don't throw stones.
Do use all a favor and stfu you morons.
*kawff* oxymoron *kawff*
RFLMAO!!
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