It was a Mafia hit, not a reasoned military mission (to yield information from the brothers to track their father down with). The White House needed something for the news to counter all the stories cropping up on their inept cover-up of their political manipulation of our intelligence sources over the Niger false statements.


Excessive Force?

By Rod Nordland, Newsweek Web Exclusive

It was much-needed tangible proof that America was making progress in the war in Iraq. After several weeks of drooping morale and a daily, if single-digit body count, the U.S. military on Tuesday announced its soldiers had killed Saddam Hussein's sons in a ferocious firefight in their Mosul hideout.
AMERICAN OFFICIALS crowed about it, troops around Iraq high-fived each other, friendly Iraqis fired their guns in the air in celebration. Even the stock markets rose on the news.

Certainly only a few diehards mourned the passing of Uday and Qusay Hussein; the regime's Caligula and its Heir Apparent were if anything despised and feared even more than their dad. But as details became clearer of the raid that eliminated what the U.S. military calls High Value Targets (HVTs) Nos. 2 and 3, a lot of people in the intelligence community were left wondering: why weren't they just taken alive?...






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