Anatomy of the raid on Hussein's sons

[Wonder]

snip
MOSUL, IRAQ – A sleek Mercedes- Benz stood in the underground garage along with a pool of blood. A panoply of rifles and pistols lay strewn in the three-story mansion in Mosul where Saddam Hussein's two sons and associates held out during a desperate, four-hour firefight on Tuesday.

In the end, it took almost all the firepower the Army could muster - TOW missiles, Kiowa helicopter rockets, and Mark-19 grenade launchers - to punch through the fortress-like inner walls of the villa and kill Uday Hussein and his brother, Qusay, according to US soldiers who took part in the fight. Two other Iraqis, not yet identified, were also killed, and four Americans took gunshot wounds. A government official told the Monitor that one of the slain Iraqis was Qusay's teenaged son.

The gun battle was followed by a tense calm Wednesday in Mosul, where graffiti painted in red on earthen brick walls declares "Down with America" and "God, Country, Saddam." US soldiers and Iraqi trainees armed with wooden baseball bats secured the gutted house behind a ring of concertina wire, as military investigators combed the premises.

Some residents of this northern Iraqi city of 2 million, home to many former high-ranking Iraqi military officers, say they aren't convinced the Hussein heirs are dead. Others mourned a young man they say was killed when a US soldier opened fire on a small group of protesters during the assault, a claim American commanders dispute. Still others believe and welcome the news, saying Uday and Qusay's fate should stand as a warning to future Iraqi leaders.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0724/p01s01-woiq.html

[teryang]

1. Let that be a lesson to you?

<Still others believe and welcome the news, saying Uday and Qusay's fate should stand as a warning to future Iraqi leaders.>

Erh, what exactly is that warning? That the tempermental and manipulative American puppetmasters may support torturers and murderers of State one decade and turn on them the next? What exactly is the moral of this story?

[bemildred]

2. Ponder this one:

"US soldiers and Iraqi trainees armed with wooden baseball bats
secured the gutted house behind a ring of concertina wire, as
military investigators combed the premises."

They aren't giving the "trainees" guns yet. I'll bet those bats
come in really handy when you are attacked with RPGs.