Saddams Sons

Originally posted by Sparks
Man, the rules say that in that situation you shoot the person in the centre of mass. Not walk over to them and beat them in the head with a rifle butt...

Come now Sparks, more speculation, I wouldn't be giving the likes of Saddam the satisfaction of this untill I knew exactly what had happened.
mm

Sparks

Or he could have been hit by some falling debris due to all those TOW missiles. We just don't know, and any accusations that the US troops murdered them in cold blood are just speculation at this stage.

On it's own, I'd agree with your assessment.
Taken in conjunction with Quasay having two holes behind his right ear, I'm a lot less sure.

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

Well, Qusay had roughly 20 bullet holes in his body. Given the desperate need to raise confidence in the Iraqi people that the regime won't return, it wouldn't suprise me if an executive order had been issued for their deaths.

In the event of violent individuals with valuable information being sequestered in a compound- the sensible thing would be not to storm the place, but to set a cordon and wait them out. Fact is, having interviewed all the relevant scientists from weapons programmes the coalition already knows the truth- that Iraq posed no threat with WMD. As to information regarding Saddam's whereabouts, I would surmise that they hoped for documentation to provide those necessary clues. There was no right answer from a realpolitik point of view- suffice to say it was a messily and poorly handled operation, much like the rest of the post-war plan.

No wonder GIs are asking for Rumsfeld's resignation- their lives are now on the line for the sake of a disjointed and misjudged occupation. Blair is confident history will forgive him- on the contrary, history will be amazed at the rapidity with which we squandered international good-will post 9/11. With the strength of such a powerful and united coalition of nations, terrorists would really have been running for cover. Instead, the fundamentalists have likely slipped through the cracks in NATO and the security council, as evidenced by the spate of attacks across the Middle East. Moreover with such a coalition, the Israel-Palestine peace process could genuinely and credibly have been tackled by a united coalition. Now, instead of wooing moderate Arab opinion we have turned it against us- even those few moderate voices in the Middle East that spoke with sympathy after 9/11 are now saying we had it coming and point to Iraq as justification for further attacks. Osama, wherever he is, must be wringing his hands.

Originally posted by Sparks
On it's own, I'd agree with your assessment.
Taken in conjunction with Quasay having two holes behind his right ear, I'm a lot less sure.

{ Start of more pointless speculation } Ricochet?? {end of further pointless speculation }

mm

Sparks

Blair is confident history will forgive him- on the contrary, history will be amazed at the rapidity with which we squandered international good-will post 9/11.

As a totally academic side-point, it will be interesting to see how the discussions on this and other threads, forums and boards will be used by historians in relation to this subject...