"And now, more than ever, the Iraqi people can know the former regime is gone and is not coming back." "Saddam Hussein's sons were responsible for torture, for maiming innocent citizens and for the murder of countless Iraqis," President Bush said in Philadelphia. The Bush administration insisted that the evidence would dispel any doubts about the men's identities. Offering further proof, the Pentagon released X-rays of one body that showed pins in the legs that resembled those implanted in Odai after an assassination attempt in the mid-1990s. "These pictures are not clear," former Iraqi intelligence chief Wafiq al-Sammarai said on the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera. In cafes, shops and houses, Iraqis scanned television screens and examined the appearance of lips, teeth, eyes and build for confirmation of the men's identities. "To get closure that two particularly vicious members of that regime are in fact dead is, I believe, something that will contribute to more Iraqi people being willing to come forward with information." "The Baathists and the people of that country are frightened of Saddam Hussein and his regime," Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld said that releasing the photographs was necessary to "save American lives." The United States has long objected to the display of photographs of American war dead. invasion.Īt the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. The brothers wore thick facial hair they had not had before the U.S. For every believer, there seemed to be a nonbeliever. In Baghdad, Iraqis debated the merits of the photos. Members, including a doctor, said there was "absolutely no doubt it was Odai and Qusai," a spokesman said. The Iraqi Governing Council was taken to an airport morgue to view the bodies. Analysts and forensic experts on pan-Arab stations dissected the four images and compared them to pre-war pictures of the men. Through the night, people in the Arab world were riveted to television reports showing the bloody, bearded faces and wounded shoulders of Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai. BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Pentagon released graphic photographs of the slain sons of Saddam Hussein yesterday evening in an effort to convince skeptical Iraqis that they were indeed dead and that the Hussein regime had no chance of returning to power.
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