Robert Fisk - His sons are dead but Saddam lives

["David Quarter" <davidquarter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From:           	mart <mart2@xxxxxxxx>

---------------------------
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3514198

Robert Fisk: His sons are dead but Saddam lives

23.07.2003 -

So they are dead. Or are they? Even Baghdad
exploded in celebratory, deafening automatic
rifle fire at the news. The burned, bullet-splashed
villa in Mosul, the four bullet-ridden corpses,
America's hopes - however vain - that the death
of Saddam Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay,
will break the guerrilla resistance to Iraq's US
occupation troops, all conspired to produce an
illusion last night: that the unidentified bodies
found after a four-hour gun battle between Iraqi
gunmen and US forces must be those of the
former dictator's sons - because the world wants
them to be.

Of course, they might be dead. The two men are
said to bear an impressive resemblance to the brothers.
A 14-year-old child killed by the Americans - one of
the four dead - might be one of Saddam's grandsons.
The house was owned by Mohamed el-Zidani, a tribal
ally of the Husseins.

Qusay was a leader of the Special Republican Guard,
a special target of the Americans. The two men
obviously fought fiercely against the 200 American
troops who surrounded the house. The Americans used
their so-called Task Force 20 to storm the
pseudo-Palladian villa on a main highway through Mosul.

Task Force 20 combines both special forces and CIA
agents. But this is the same Task Force 20 that blasted to
death the occupants of a convoy heading for the Syrian
border earlier this month, a convoy whose travellers were
meant to include Saddam himself and even the two sons
supposedly killed yesterday. The victims turned out to be
only smugglers.

And American intelligence - the organisation that failed
to predict events of 11 September, 2001 - was also
responsible for the air raid on a Saddam villa on 20
March, which was supposed to kill Saddam. And the far
crueller air raid on the Mansour district of Baghdad at
the end of the air bombardment in April which was
supposed to kill Saddam and his sons but only succeeded
in slaughtering 16 innocent civilians. All proved to be
miserable failures.

And in a family obsessed, with good reason, with their
own personal security, would Uday and Qusay really
be together? Would they allow themselves to be trapped.
The two so-called "lions of Iraq" (this courtesy of
Saddam) in the very same cage?

Saddam's early life was spent on the run. But he always
travelled alone. In adversity, the family had learned to
stay apart, just as they had during the 1991 Gulf War and
during last March's invasion of Iraq. Even in power,
Saddam and his sons were in hiding. Even if DNA testing
proves that the corpses are those of Saddam's sons, will
Iraqis believe it? And will it bring the guerrilla war to an
end?

Firstly, even if Uday and Qusay are dead, Saddam is
clearly still alive. Though Uday was both a cruel man
and a psychopath, they were appendages to the king,
mere assistants in the monster's cave. Saddam lives.
And his voice is still heard on tape throughout Iraq.
It is his fate of which Iraqis are waiting to hear.

Secondly, and far more importantly, there is a
fundamental misunderstanding between the American
occupation authorities in Iraq and the people whose
country they are occupying. The United States believes
that the entire resistance to America's proconsulship of
Iraq is composed of "remnants" of Saddam's followers,
"dead-enders", "bitter-enders" - they have other phrases
to describe them. Their theory is that once the Hussein
family is decapitated, the resistance will end.

But the guerrillas who are killing US troops every
day are also being attacked by a growing Islamist
Sunni movement which never had any love for
Saddam. Much more importantly, many Iraqis were
reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an
end to American occupation would mean the return
of the ghastly old dictator.

If he and his sons are dead, the chances are that the
opposition to the American-led occupation will
grow rather than diminish - on the grounds that with
Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by
fighting the Americans.