Pictures Of Saddam Hussein

The funny, miserable Syrian media

THE media in revolutionary countries is funny and miserable. Some of us might still remember the renowned Egyptian journalist, Ahmad Sa’eed, who informed us about the fall of over 300 Israeli warplanes like flies on June 1, 1967, contrary to reality. Meanwhile, Mohammad Sa’eed Al-Sahaf made fun of Saddam Hussein’s government when he depicted the American forces, which freed his country from the claws of Saddam Hussein, as ‘atheists’. He and his ‘master’ later hid from the ‘atheists’ shamefully. One of them hid in the rat hole, while Al-Sahaf (the mouthpiece) moved around cafés and bars in Dubai and Abu Dhabi like a woman in her 60s for whom nobody would open even a bottle of Coca Cola! The revolutions, which spread to Arab nations through the modern communications gadgets, are amazing. The precision cameras that used to be exclusive for spies are now at the disposal of ordinary citizens who use mobile phones to take regular pictures and videos. Within seconds, they distribute pictures across the globe through the Internet. The problem with tyrannical governments is they have been ignoring the fact that the whole world has become a single village exposed to everyone, so everybody can use Google Earth to look at the neighbor’s toilet. Although the international media covers incidents in Syria daily, the official Syrian media still overlooks the government’s brutal clampdown on citizens. It is wicked that the official media makes fun of the opposition through music, illustrations and video clips. Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily published on Aug 11, 2011 a report that a Facebook page - “Syrian revolution against Bashar Al-Assad 2011” - contained a video clip entitled “Over 10 funny clips presented by the Syrian Media and its Trumpets”, which was uploaded on YouTube. One clip showed a Syrian guest in a television program, claiming the Al-Jazeera Channel, which has been purchased by the Qatari government, is Jewish. Commenting on the street protests, another guest asked, “Do we expect these protesters, the childish people in France or the person who sold his country in 2005 (he was referring to Abdul-Halem Al-Khaddam) to replace our young heroic president? They should shut up and stay away”. The third guest described the protesters as “garbage”. He said, “I previously referred to them as garbage”, so the presenter asked him who were they? He replied, “Those who participated in the demonstrations on Friday.” He alleged the protesters were not more than 15,000. The fourth guest considered the incidents in Syria “a war between Syria and Israel instigated by proxies in the Syrian territory. Traitors and renegades execute the war, so killing them is mandatory while fighting them is more important than the Israeli enemies”. The funniest clip was that of a guest who criticized Al-Jazeera Channel saying, “We were recording them while we had a team of psychologists analyzing what they were broadcasting, while research was ongoing”. He continued, “We have benefited from this experiment, since it was useful for the masters and PhD theses on the kind of negative media in Al-Jazeera”. We want to tell the Syrian officials, this is wrong. Please respect our intellect and that of other people. Do not trivialize the great Syrians. Your media is detached from reality. This reminds us of the inhumane Saddam, who turned Iraqi farmers into chisels, while using ancient Italian guns, hidden since World War I, to fire at the American Apache helicopters. function Clickheretoprint() { var disp_setting = "toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,menubar=no,"; disp_setting += "scrollbars=yes,width=650, height=600, left=100, top=25"; var content_vlue = document.getElementById("main_article").innerHTML; var docprint = window.open("", "", disp_setting); docprint.document.open(); docprint.document.

July 22, 2003: Finding Saddam Hussein's Sons | Intel | Command Posts

Mosul, Iraq

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

The tip came from an Iraqi, a “walk-in” in American police lingo, and it was a hot one: Saddam Hussein’s two sons, Uday and Qusay, were holed up in a palatial house in this northern city. Since the fall of Baghdad, Saddam’s brutal heirs had been the subject of a manhunt second only to the search for their father. On the pocket-sized deck of playing cards of Iraq’s most wanted that had been issued to American soldiers, Qusay was number two, the ace of clubs, and Uday was number three, the ace of hearts. There was a $15 million bounty on each of their heads.  Nawaf al-Zidan, the owner of the house where the brothers were reported to be hiding, sat calmly outside the building, smoking, drinking water and eating fruit with American soldiers. Once upon a time, Zidan had bragged of being Saddam’s kinsman, but had soured on him after the president threw his brother in jail. Was it payback time? No one was saying, but Zidan was in American custody and troops were moving into position around his house.

By 10 a.m. Special Operations soldiers and members of the 101st Airborne Division had surrounded the house and ordered the occupants to surrender. None did. Ten minutes later, soldiers entered the building and faced fire. Three soldiers were wounded, and the Americans withdrew. Over the next three hours, the Americans pounded the building, shredding its columned walls with grenades and antitank rockets, machine-gun fire and ten TOW antitank missiles. They tried and failed to get into a barricaded room on the second floor. Finally, at 1:21 PM, the Americans stormed a second-floor bedroom, taking fire from and then killing Qusay’s fourteen-year-old son, Mustafa. When the shooting stopped, three adults were found dead on a bathroom floor, the Hussein brothers and a bodyguard.

Dental records, X rays from a 1996 assassination attempt on Uday, and personal viewings by four senior members of Saddam’s government who were already in American custody all provided irrefutable proof, American military officials said, that the bodies were those of Uday and Qusay. But some Iraqis remained in doubt, so the Americans released grisly photographs, first raw head-and-shoulders views, and then pictures of the faces and bodies after they had been made up by morticians. The first pictures showed that both men were bloated, with heavier beards than either had been known in life. Uday’s features were the most damaged, with a long bruise climbing from the mouth across his face.

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