Was it hypocritical for the US to release pics of Saddam's Sons?
 

Something struck me as I saw the dead faces of Uday and Qusay...Weren't we the ones raising hell to the international community about International Law, the Geneva convention, Journalistic Integrity, etc. when the pictures of our captured soldiers were broadcast on Al-Jazeera and were visibly frightened and humiliated for all the world to see?

In light of this, do you feel that it was right for the US to broadcast the corpses of the 2 Hussein's to prove that they were dead?

Why do we broadcast pictures of Guantanamo Bay?
We do it to show that we have prisoners there.
Why do they broadcast pictures of POWS?
They do it to show that they have POWS.
Why do we broadcast pictures of dead opponents?
To prove that they are dead.
Why do they broadcast pictures of dead Americans?
To prove that they killed some.

We both comlain when the other side broadcasts demoralizing images, but we still do it. Our sides aren't all that differant.

Hmmm. I guess soon it'll be time for some bureaucrat to register the domain name www.rotten.gov.

While I disagree with this statement in that the two sides are very different, I do wonder how the US ever expects people to respect its moral ramblings if they don't take the high ground themselves....parading pictures and dead bodies in front of journalists is just as barbaric as some of the Taliban and Hussein regimes actions.

I wish the US would stop shooting itself in the foot and grow up a little bit.

While I can see the hypocracy in sending the images I can also see why the needed to prove(if a picture is proof nowadays) that they killed them.

Would have been better if they had them in a jail cell.

I think the American Military vs. 4 was a overkill and they could have brought them out alive. We could have avoided this entire thing.

I don't know the specifics of why they couldn't get them out alive... There seems to be no reason why they couldn't just institute a seige. Lock them in for a month if you have to... lob in knock out gas... whatever.

Seems to me they were more valuable alive as an example than dead as an example.

Showing the photos has been deemed neccessary in order to convince the Iraqi people that they were in fact killed. Apparently there is still much doubt.

I can see the importance of showing the Iraqi's that their oppressors are dead so they can stop being afraid of them.

But don't release it in america, we don't need to see it. They should have just release it into Iraq, and if the us media gets a hold of it and runs it... it's their freedom of choice to do so.

There are rules against displaying the bodies of a country's leadership. Our government probrably shouldn't have just passed them off to american media.

The pictures aren't exactly irrefutable proof anyway. I saw one of the pictures. It's cropped very close which makes it ambiguous as all it really is, is an eye and some skin

The reasoning behind release of these pictures is far different from the reasoning behind our protest of situation you made reference to.

There's a difference between what the Iraqis did - showing pictures of prisoners/dead soldiers before the families had had a chance to find out the status of their loved ones - and showing these photos of Uday and Qusai. There's a long history of mistrust in Iraq (understandably) of officials saying "so and so is dead" when they're just in hiding and come back to wreak their vengeance. The Iraqi people needed proof, so they showed the photos. They had already announced in all the media that they were killed so it's not like it was a big surprise to anybody, not like to the American families. I don't find it hypocritical at all. Distasteful, yes, but not hypocritical.

American soldiers, or the LEGAL ARMED COMBATANTS in any conflict, are protected from what the Iraqis did by the Geneva convention. Saddam's kids are not armed combatants. Whether you agree with the war and it's outcome or not, the fact is that the US now occupies Iraq and a provisional government is being set up. The Hussein boys (and Saddam for that matter) are instigating and contributing to the destruction of that government and the killing of American soldiers. The situations are entirely different. The only thing there is in common here is that there are photos of dead people in both instances.

-Mikey

same here

Presonally, I agree that the pictures probably needed to be shown as the Iraqi people have lived in fear of the Hussein's for so long...I don't have a problem with the pictures themselves being released...but allowing them to video-tape the bodies seems a bit macabre.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e=5&u=/ap/iraq

Judge for yourself.

I'd say while it it was needed for the Iraqi people it was in ways a bit hypocritical.

Its pretty damn bad publicity and honestly they could've gotten 'em alive. People say they would never surrender - and I say, we have so many means of taking em out w/o killing em that we should've done it. Sounds a bit more like vengeance and propaganda IMO - great ratings in the U.S. +++ war effort ratings woowoo.

Whatever, wahts done is done, but this won't matter much if Saddam is still around.

In the context that you weren't there, how would you know we could have gotten them alive?

I enjoy seeing people criticize the U.S. military, I really do, it proves that no matter what you do, or how good you are people will still think they could have done things better, even if they don't know what the fuck was happening, or what the superiors wanted and why.

In the context that you weren't there, how would you know we couldn't have gotten them alive?


It's a case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't."

If they hadn't of killed them, the public would ask them why they tried so hard to take them alive. They're just mass murdering fuckheads, right?

If the Gov't hadn't paraded the photos around and mentioned it about 50,000 times a day, we would be asking where's the proof.

In the end, it really doesn't matter how the gov't handled the Hussein brothers. The only difference would be in the conversation we're having.

Huh? Maybe you're mixing Iraq up with Afghanistan, but last I checked Saddam's sons were both military officers in the legitimate Iraqi government prior to the USA invasion (without U.N. approval, I might add, which makes the "legal" status of the USA's army a bit murky.)

If what you say is true, then the USA could declare war on canada tomorrow, declare that we won the war on day 2, then kill anyone we want on day 3. I don't think it works that way.

Why did we have to? Because no one trusts our word. Not a bit.

With the current go it alone foreign policy where we've been telling the world to basically 'sod off' and retro-justifying preemptive war to achieve pax americana, by any means necessary, of freakin course we're going to have to show DNA /dental records/live video to even have a chance of being believed.

And that's pitiful.

2Wolves

Oh, okay... Then perhaps we should stop talking about whether they should have been shot or not. They were soldiers, they fought until the end, and they were killed in combat. Good for us.

As for the legality of showing their bodies: they were both soldiers *and* political figures *and* criminal bastards. I don't give a rat's arse about their rights. They had a right to be shot in the balls for all I care.

My, what a big straw man you have there. If you point is true, then perhaps we should just pull out the nuclear bombs and kill everyone on the planet, you war-monger!!!! (See, I can build a good straw man too.) :)

I was responding to Mikey Chalupa who said:

So, if you think they were soldiers, then you disagree with MikeyChalupa, agree with me, and therefore the Geneva convention applies, just as it did when Iraq displayed American bodies for political gain, and the USA was in violation of the geneva convention.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have killed them, and I'm not saying that they weren't bad guys. I'm just saying what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and this is another case of the Bush Administration citing international law in one instance and ignoring it when it is convenient for them.

I think it became necessary because we had cried wolf twice before. "This time we got them. No really, we did. We really did - we checked their dental records. Uday was a terrible flosser!"

I think it represents a shortcoming in the PR of the military. This is caused by the intense media scrutiny that will leech information out of all possible sources, even if the source is poor. This is caused by the intense competition between media outlets to be the first to release a story. This is caused by the creation of Internet news. This is caused by the creation of the Internet, which was created by Al Gore.

Thus, it is Al Gore's fault that these pictures were released.

Signed,

George W. Bush

Nice straw man theory, but not correct. I was responding to various people that said we should have taken them alive for some reason. They were (apparently) soldiers, soldiers who fought to the dead. My, weren't they brave... The US offered them terms of surrender ("get the fuck out of that building!"), and they refused to do so, making their deaths entirely justified.

As for them being shown... as soon as they were dead, they changed from being (ex-) soldiers to (ex-) politicians, whose deaths - if proven - might persuade many Iraqis that things are going to be all right.

Discussing whether showing them was hypocritical is just hypocritical, especially if you take into account that many people opposing this have always said the US should prove that Iraq had WMDs, or that the US should in fact prove *everything* it says (they can't be trusted, after all).

Now the US has proven what they said, and people start whining that they shouldn't have done that. Even if it's not hypocritical, it's certainly rather silly. In the real world, laws aren't universal, nor are some things always wrong, or other things always right. It's slightly more complex than that.

In this case, the good effects of showing these bastards' pics far outweigh the potential breach of the Geneva convention.

Well the deaths really haven't convinced much considering more still die these days anyways.

I doubt the U.S. gov't is right in saying this was a huge conspiracy / guerilla movement by saddam - i bet even if he was dead - people would still be shooting.

The credibility of the U.S. is down and that was one way to get out of the hole (by releasing the pictures). I don't morally agree with it, but I feel the government did what they had to, to win over Iraq's support. Don't think for a minute I agreed with the war or the President, I'm just expressing my opinion on the situation.

All of you are french government officals posting on this fourm for you PR!

Seriously now nobody in Iraq even believed us that we killed them.

The photos were rather graphic and I personally didn't think that they should've been released, however I stand by the descision made by my country. As the Iraqis needed to be sent a message that these hencemen were dead, and that we will find you if you go against the US.

I think in the long run it will make our troops safer.

I understand why the government felt it was necessary to release the photos, and even partially agree with the reasoning. Unfortunately, the move was hypocritical and certainly a moral breach (if not legal) of interational standards. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Providing them was hypocritical.

Not providing would have been ludicrous.

US violated Geneva Convention. Has, does, and will.

What is anyone going to do about it?

-b-

I do think it was wrong to show the pictures, after all the Bush government screams it is wrong when pictures of captured / dead American soliders are shown.

But at the end of the day Bush does not care what is right or legal, he only cares about is keeping hold of power.

This is another case of Bush shooting himself in the foot again. Aside from the Geneva Convention aspects of this question, consider that we are trying to set up a "democratic" government for the people of Iraq and, therefore should be doing everything possible to establish some kind of empathy for these people. Despite the fact that these two guys may be hated by many of the Iraqis, we really piss off the whole country when we do things that are contrary to their religion. And doing what they did with these two bodies was sacreligious in the extreme, not just the photos, but fooling with the bodies, shaving them, not burying them appropriately, etc. If we're going to take over a country and pretend to be doing them a favor by being there, we should at least learn enough about them to not offend them at every turn. We have a poor history in this regard.

even though the boys who belong to saddam hussein were the bad guys, they were still the sons of a man.

i don't know if it was being right or wrong, but i am sad any which way.

Theres a major differance between what we did and what they did. We had to show the pictures or else the Iraqi people would not believe that they were dead. Convincing them of that is essential to getting them to coaperate with the US recunstruction efforts. If they people don't think the administration is gone they don't coaperate.

guy2003:

How does that make it different? Why couldn't they just say that they had to release pictures of the prisoners they took or else the American people wouldn't believe that they had them?

They could, but they didn't. They showed videos of American soldiers being humiliated. If you can't see the difference between that and the US providing proof of Saddam's sons' deaths, then there's nothing left to discuss.