Stardate 20030722.1656

(On Screen via long range sensors): Based on a tip, the US made a raid on a house in Mosul, and have killed Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein. Their bodies have been positively identified by a top official of the Baathist regime who is cooperating with American authorities and who personally knew both men, and the body thought to be Uday has on it wounds consistent with those inflicted on Uday in an assassination attempt which left him crippled. More evidence probably will also be found, and they plan DNA tests, but I don't think this would be announced if the American authorities weren't already very sure of it. (There was no hurry in the announcement, and to announce prematurely and then retract it later would have been a major embarrassment.)

It's a huge propaganda success. It should have a substantial effect on the morale of those in the Sunni triangle who continue to resist through raiding and banditry.

And it indicates the extent to which Iraqis are beginning to support the occupation, because the raid was based on a tip from someone local. That person will likely be eligible for the $30 million reward money, and it is likely that the money was a significant incentive (as, indeed, it was intended to be). But this indicates something deeper, because even $30 million is no good to a dead man.

After decades of brutal Baathist rule, there is natural fear among Iraqis that the US might not stay, and that Saddam and the Baathists might ultimately prevail and regain power, plunging the nation back into the nightmare. Were that to happen, anyone who was known to have cooperated with the Americans would be a prime target for retaliation, and the kind and quantity of retaliation which could be expected is extremely well known. So cooperation and support for American occupation has been tentative and extremely careful in most parts of Iraq, as a function of how confident any given person was that the Americans were committed to staying. (To some extent, this is the bitter fruit we harvest for our empty verbal support of the failed 1991 revolution, one of the greatest political and moral failings of our nation since the end of the Cold War.)

The fact that someone was willing to finger Qusay and Uday for us is significant. It would obviously make them a prime target for an extremely slow and brutal death if the Baathists regain power. Or if there's an organized underground, they might get a brutal death anyway. So it indicates that they think the chance of that is very low, and that they're willing to take the risk.

This doesn't necessarily indicate support for our occupation, as such, but it shows an increasing belief among Iraqis that the US is completely serious and doesn't intend to give up. That, by itself, is a very good thing, because it means that they are increasingly convinced that the forces resisting us are not going to win. Irrespective of whether they believe that our occupation is good or bad, they are coming to believe that it's permanent, and that is a victory for us. It means that we're redeeming the failure of 1991, and gaining the trust of the Iraqi people. (Note that you can trust someone you hate; trust and support are not the same thing.)

And the deaths of Qusay and Uday are symbolic events which show how serious we actually are, and will show our commitment to continuing to hunt down and destroy the remnants of the Baathist power structure which went into hiding. I don't know that there's any particularly good reason to publish photographs of the corpses for the world, but I sincerely hope that pictures of them are widely distributed in Iraq itself, in order to increase the propaganda effect. (And if that happens, they'll be available to the world too. So watch for them.)

I think it indicates a significant chance, perhaps as high as 1 in 4, that we'll also bag Saddam himself in the next couple of weeks. First, whatever source fingered Qusay and Uday may also have provided information about Saddam's whereabouts. Second, prisoners and physical evidence from the site of yesterday's raid may give clues as to Saddam's whereabouts. Third, this may panic Saddam into moving, and perhaps into giving himself away.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, someone else who sees the news about this raid may decide to finger Saddam for us.

Four of our men were wounded in this operation. I hope none of the wounds are serious and that all of them recover fully. But it was in a very good cause; these men did not sell their wounds cheaply, and as they suffer through recovery they can console themselves that they helped to kill two of the most monstrous humans who have walked the earth in the last hundred years.

Yet to be answered is what we'll actually do with the bodies. Burying them in identifiable graves could work either way; it could become a symbol of the resistance, but equally it could become a place for people to go and express their hatred of Baathist rule. I don't think we'll desecrate their corpses, but I also don't expect any kind of honorable formal burial in identifiable graves. Cremation and distribution of the ashes at sea (or over the desert), with little or no publicity, is probably the best answer.