Iraq

U.S. releases grisly pictures

Officials say they hope that seeing the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein will ease Iraqis' fears and attacks against U.S. troops.

Warning: Graphic images of bodies of Saddam's sons

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The United States released grisly photos Thursday to convince Iraqis that Saddam Hussein's sons are dead and to weaken support for an anti-American insurgency. But some Iraqis saw the pictures of the bloodied, bearded men as a ruse.

The photographs identified as the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein were immediately broadcast by U.S.-sponsored Iraqi TV, CNN and two Arab satellite television networks widely viewed in Iraq. Al-Sa'a newspaper held its front and back pages open to publish them this morning.

Much of Baghdad was without power when the pictures were broadcast on Iraqi TV at 9 p.m. Thursday. While satellite television sales have soared since the war, few Iraqis have access.

"This is a U.S. ploy to try to break the spirit of the resistance," said Jassim al-Robai, a computer engineer who was sharing an ice cream tart with two friends at a restaurant in Baghdad. After seeing the images, Robai said he wasn't convinced that the brothers were killed in a gunbattle with U.S. soldiers.

At a Pentagon news conference, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that it was his decision to release photos of the dead sons and that it was "not a close call." He did, however, acknowledge that it ran counter to the U.S. military's unwritten convention of not showing images of enemy war dead.

Rumsfeld likened the circumstance to 1989, when Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown and executed.

"It was not until the people of that country saw him - saw his body - that they actually believed that the fear and the threat that his regime posed to them was gone," Rumsfeld said.

Washington had hoped that the deaths of Uday and Qusay would weaken the insurgency, but an attack on a convoy Thursday killed three Americans from the division that led the assault on Hussein's sons' hideout in the northern city of Mosul.

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, said Thursday that the deaths of Hussein's sons - and Iraqis' acceptance of this - "will, in fact, in time help reduce the security threat to our forces."

"I would not be surprised to see an uptick in violence against our forces," said Bremer, standing alongside Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. "But I think in the long run it will also hopefully encourage more Iraqis to come and give us information about more Baathists."

The four photos showed the shirtless upper torsos of the two bruised and battered men, their heavy beards matted with splotches of congealed blood. Similar bloody smears covered their slightly blackened faces. Both are apparently lying on the floor, Uday in what seems to be an olive drab body bag, with its zipper visible. Behind him, a human hand in a blue glove is holding a rag that was apparently used to wipe his face. A bucket of sudsy water sits nearby.

Qusay was shown lying on a pile of sheets, his face to the side and his mouth open. Both men have their eyes closed. Neither brother had ever worn such thick beards, evidently part of their disguise. Both also appeared to have gained weight.

Uday, 39, had the most damaged features, with the area around his upper lip shattered and a long bruise climbing from his mouth across his face. A wound blossomed on the right side of the stubble on his shaved head. An American military spokesman refused to confirm suspicions that Uday had committed suicide. The day before, however, the commanding general said that a complete match to Uday's dental records was not possible because 10 percent of his teeth were heavily damaged.

Offering further proof, the Pentagon released X-rays of one body showing pins in the legs that resembled those implanted in Uday after an assassination attempt in the mid 1990s.

Autopsies have not been completed. The U.S.-led coalition promised to take news media today to the morgue where the bodies are being kept and to release autopsy reports.

Abbas Fadhil, a 44-year-old barbershop owner in Baghdad, said he had no doubts after seeing the pictures on Iraqi TV that the photographs were of the brothers.

"The doubts will remain because the coalition forces didn't show them from the front and the sides, didn't show their profiles," he said, adding Qusay's photograph was a perfect image of him.

Earlier in the day, members of Iraq's Governing Council were escorted to view the bodies at the Baghdad airport, where the corpses were taken after they were removed from the devastated villa in Mosul. Members, including a doctor, said there was absolutely no doubt it was Uday and Qusay, a spokesman said.

While some in the Arab world criticized the United States for releasing what they believed were fake photographs, others argued that even if they were authentic, releasing them was wrong.

"When Iraq broadcast photos of dead American soldiers, the U.S. considered that against human rights," Jordanian political analyst Sahar al-Qassem said. "So, why are they violating that now by showing such inhumane pictures?"

Middle East television stations, magazines and newspapers regularly run images of the dead and dying - often Arab victims of Israeli-Palestinian clashes - that are more graphic than photographs carried in U.S. media.

Uday, 39, and Qusay, 37, were killed in a gunbattle with U.S. forces after an Iraqi informer tipped the Americans to their presence, according to the military.

The military has said the brothers and a third man, believed to have been a bodyguard, were killed Tuesday by TOW missiles fired into the villa where they were hiding. A fourth person in the house, believed to be Qusay's teenage son Mustafa, was shot to death by troops storming the house after the missiles devastated it.

An Iraqi tipster led the United States to the brothers, weeks after the military offered a $15-million reward for information leading to the capture or death of either.

- Information from the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times and Chicago Tribune was used in this report.

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