Dead Sons

I suppose that the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein constitute good news, particularly insofar as Saddam’s sons were actively encouraging attacks on U.S. soldiers and Iraqi infrastructure. Capturing them might have been better, but it appears that they were determined to go down shooting. It does seem bit odd that they were in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, because of the large number of Christians and Kurds in the city (Mosul is in Northern Iraq, about 60 miles from the Turkish border). Indeed, current reports indicate that a “walk-in” informant that lead them to the sons, but I haven’t yet heard the ethnicity of the informant.

Already on CNN and MSNBC I’ve heard multiple pundits speculate or claim that these deaths are likely to reduce attacks on U.S. soldiers and other forms of resistance. Hopefully, these predictions are right, but it seems rather optimistic. Baghdad is reportedly one of the more problematic cities, and it’s over 200 miles away from Mosul, so it seems unlikely that resistance in Baghdad is reliant upon Uday or Qusay. Tikrit, Saddam’s home town, is also a problematic city, but it’s over 100 miles from where Uday and Qusay were found.

In an even bigger stretch, I caught the tail end of former CIA Directory James Woolsey on MSNBC. Woolsey was arguing that as a result of the deaths of Saddam’s sons, previously intimidated scientists will now come out and tell inspectors where the WMD are. I would think by now that the pro-war crowd would stop saying that WMD are just around the corner, and simply wait and hope quietly.

AB