Operation Backfire

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq Grenade Attack
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A grenade attack killed three U.S. soldiers and
wounded four Saturday while they guarded a children's hospital in Baqouba,
a town northeast of Baghdad.

The deaths of the soldiers from the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division
brought to 161 the number of troops killed in action in Iraq since the
start of the war, 14 more than in the 1991 Gulf War.

Further details on the grenade attack were not immediately available. It
came as Iraqis continued to debate the authenticity of video images of the
bodies of Odai and Qusai Hussein released Friday by U.S. authorities in
their effort to convince Iraqis the brothers were dead.

(clip)

U.S. officials have expressed hope that the killings of Odai and Qusai
would weaken the anti-American resistance and lead coalition forces to
Saddam himself.

Arab satellite media and CNN broadcast images of the brother's bodies
throughout Iraq and the Arab world after journalists viewed them Friday.
The corpses appeared markedly changed from the autopsy-style photographs
released a day earlier.

Thick beards -- grown, officials said, during 3 1/2 months on the run --
had been shaved and trimmed, their faces rebuilt and a gash gone from the
face of the body identified as Odai.

The display appeared to be a calculated gamble by coalition authorities,
who may have produced more convincing evidence but also offended Muslims in
Iraq and elsewhere by altering the bodies and delaying burial.

``Showing dead and deformed bodies on TV is not acceptable,'' protested
Amer Ahmed al-Azawi, a 55-year-old Baghdad merchant. ``But the Americans
are criminals and unbelievers. We got rid of one tyrant and we ended up
with a bigger one.''

Hamza Mansour, secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front in neighboring
Jordan, said the display violated Islamic custom.

``The bodies of Odai and Qusai should have been washed, shrouded and buried
immediately, but the Americans have no respect for our traditions and
doctrine and they acted in a very unethical manner,'' he said.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?hp

Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org