LTG SANCHEZ SENDS

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. troops killed two of the most feared and powerful figures of Saddam Hussein's regime — his sons Odai and Qusai — during a fierce six-hour gun battle Tuesday in the northern city of Mosul, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said.

Four U.S. troops were wounded in the fight.

The deaths of the two brothers marked an important military and morale-boosting breakthrough for U.S. troops, who for weeks have been killed in daily attacks and who sometimes appeared to be on the brink of losing control in the country they and British forces conquered three months ago...

After the gunbattle, U.S. troops searched the villa and found four men dead, Sanchez said.

"We have since confirmed that Odai and Qusai were among the dead," Sanchez said. The bodies of the other two men had not yet been identified, though there was some speculation that one was Odai's bodyguard and the other was Qusai's teenage son.

Sanchez said the raid came after a local informant tipped U.S. soldiers to the brothers' hiding place.

"It was a walk-in last night who came in and gave us the information," Sanchez said. He promised a detailed briefing on the raid Wednesday afternoon...

Sanchez said the identities of Odai and Qusai were established through "multiple sources," but added that "the bodies were in such a condition where you could identify them."

Based on my time in the Army I'd say it is probable that the average Everyman in Baghdad heard this news before the average US Soldier. So I wonder what the GIs thought when all of a sudden an unusual amount of gunfire was heard in and around Baghdad...

Meanwhile, here is some of what led to LTG Sanchez confirming on TV that we killed these two:

A U.S. official told CNN that Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Saddam's personal secretary, who was captured last month, helped identify the bodies.

In addition, this official said, other visual evidence helped identify the remains, including wounds on Uday's body from previous assassination attempts.



I fully expect we will hear any number of naysayers doubting aloud that we actually killed them. And I'm going to be interested to find out what serves as a standard of proof in Iraq.

I have no idea if the average Iraqi can spell DNA. So while that standard is good enough for you and me, it may be lost on Mohammed the soda vendor.

And so, will it mean publishing photos of the corpses? Well, if that is the standard of proof in Iraq, then, yes, it just might. And make no mistake about it...we MUST prove to the Iraqis that these two thugs are dead. Iraq cannot move forward if still shackled to the fears of yesterday.

And so - be prepared. We may need to see some gruesome photos. And when we do, there will be voices crying loud and long that we are brutes, that we have no respect for the sensibilities of Muslims, that we desecrate the dead and that we violate the Geneva Convention.

Prepare for it, because it will happen.

But then ignore it, because it is all apologistic claptrap. War isn't pretty. Nor is doing what it takes to win.

But win we must.