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CENTCOM: Uday, Qusay killed

By Steve Gilliard

Ok, while I'm no expert, a four hour firefight is an extremely long time to fend anyone off. You have Task Force 20 supported by a company from the 101 attacking a house. People who can move fast. Now, either they shot this house up until the mice had .223 rounds in them, there were a LOT more than four people killed inside, or Uday and Qusay Hussein learned to fight from American gangster movies.

...Now, you have two martyrs for the Baathists, who died violently resisting US forces, who took four hours to kill them. These guys went out like freaking heroes. Now, if they had been caught napping, or eating a kebob, that would have made them look like the criminals they were. Now? They're going to be spun as heroes throughout the Arab world. Going down with guns blazing against an airborne unit is not a bad way to be remembered. You can bet within the month, drawings of their last gunfight will be all over walls throughout the Gulf. The commanders on the scene did what they thought was right, but if they really died in a gunfight, we've replaced two perverted killers with two Arab martyrs who would rather die than cower to the Americans.

Think it can't happen? Jesse James, who would probably be considered a war criminal today, is one of America's greatest heroes. People forget his brutal war record and his criminal career and remember his personal courage. We may well be shocked to see the kids of Gaza and Cairo with t-shirts lionizing Uday and Qusay, but we shouldn't be surprised to see it happen. ...