Uday Hussein: Just another mass-murderer who didn’t like America

The US today published “tasteful, arty” photographs of Uday, Qusay and Mustafa Hussein, the murdered sons and fourteen-year-old grandson of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Passenger asked Roger Bighouse, Pentagon artistic director, how appropriate the images were for international consumption: “Well, the juxtaposition of the bloodied heads against the jarring and iconoclastic images of a ransacked house, representing metaphorically a fallen regime, are shocking, but have an important underlying and artistic message: ‘Hey, over here! No, stop looking at those forged WMD documents! Look, dead Iraqis!’”

Saddam’s sons and young grandson were killed by approximately 250 US troops, an attack helicopter and a rocket launcher, in a six-hour siege. A spokesman for the US occupying force in Iraq explained that the assault took so long because “They kept shooting back, and we had to duck behind cover all the time.”

The Hussein brothers are one of a growing number of Iraqis who “keep shooting back”, complained a Pentagon spokesman. “‘What have the Americans done for us?’, Iraqis ask? Apart from occupation, regime change, militarisation... I mean, honestly, where’s the gratitude?”

In further hypocrisy, having murdered members of the regime they sought to arrest, they took photographs of the dead bodies and handed them out in international news agencies, brushing aside the protests of journalists made under terms of the Geneva Convention and basic decency, on grounds that “It’s our game, and we get to change the rules whenever we like. And you’re out, so you have to go and sit over there.”KTAB News does not condone the brother’s crimes of rape and torture any more than it condones the murder of Mustafa. [Like poor old Musty, I’ve always had to tolerate embarrassing relatives, what with my mother-in-law. Every damn Christmas, it’s always the same. “Let’s play Monopoly with pennies!” croaks the old baggage, and by God the trouble that leads to when she finds out she’s on my hotel on Mayfair for the fifth time in a row. Anyway, you can’t help relatives, as Mrs Bernard tells me every Boxing Day... At least she’s never tried to ethnically cleanse and entire nation, though... - - Bernard, Ed.]

The heirs of Saddam were, presumably, supposed to be arrested so they could face charges for the crimes they committed, thus allowing justice to be done. However, there has been little protest sparked by the murders, partly because Americans have already displayed their policy of shooting any Iraqi protesters, and partly because, as one soldier pointed out, “We’ll never get Saddam anyway, so there would’ve been no point questioning them!”

If the publication of these “arty” photographs is not enough to convince the Iraqi people, however, the US have plans to stretch the Geneva Convention and artistic licence even further – taking a leaf from the book of British modern artist Damien Hurst, they plan to place the dead brothers in formaldehyde and display them in a series of art galleries.

“Again, this is sending a distinct message to the world,” Bighouse explained. “This time it's something like, ‘We’ve never been good at art, but at least this is better than Whistler’s Mother! Please, look, dead Iraqis!!’”