Saddam's Teenage Grandson May Have Made Last Stand

[JaneQPublic]

Never mind Osama Bin Laden. I feel a lot safer knowing Saddam's 14-year-old grandson was shot down.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030723/wl_nm/iraq_sons_scene_dc

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s teenage grandson Mustapha may have been the last man standing after U.S. troops launched a missile barrage on a house where he had holed up with his father and uncle.

Three adults dead around him, the soldiers said he fired on them as they stormed into the ruins. They shot him down.

---snip

A barrage of 10 anti-tank missiles is likely to have killed the adults in the house, (Lieutenant-General Ricardo) Sanchez told a news conference.

---snip

But when troops burst up the staircase, they came under fire again. "They killed the remaining individual," Sanchez said.

MORE...

[Randi_Listener]

1. Like the cabal cares about dead children.

Give me a break. They don't care if it's young teenagers or old, disabled women. Bring 'em on!


^Prick on the move.

[Malva Zebrina]

6. Looks like

the Grand Procession of serial killers , baby killers and murderers. All they need is a celtic cross to hold on high--or a crusader flag.

[Randi_Listener]

10. They love the kill for the killing.

As long as the targets are brown and Muslim, the cabal loves to report news of their deaths.

[izzie]

19. That sounds to true but ......

I am now safe from the 14 year old. This group in DC do like to kill people, animals, land you name it.

[Lisa]

2. there was gloating on the news about having "severed Saddam's bloodline"

If he has grandchildren other than Mustapha who have survived, I guess they'd be wrong.

[LizW]

5. No way! That is sick.

What news outlet was saying that?

[Pallas180]

11. all of em, especially MSNBC and CNN - stupid arent they and

disgusting

[NickB79]

22. Very Biblical of them

To wipe Saddam's seed off the face of the Earth, right out of the Old Testament.

[drewb]

3. Deliberately targeting foreign leaders???

Is this an accepted policy now? We seek out and execute leaders of foreign (sovereign) nations that don't do as they are told?

:crazy:

[JaneQPublic]

13. Can all countries play that game, or just the U.S.?

I mean, if the U.S. can target leaders, why can't other countries target our "leader"?

[izzie]

21. You do not see the two top men out and about do you?

They have become Hitler's in the Bunker. Very odd how does he run?

[Frances]

4. Oh dear

I think the people of Iraq would not have minded that Saddam's sons were killed. After all, at least one of them was truly horrible.

I don't think the14-year-old being the last man standing and the last man killed is going to go over too well in Iraq however.

[w13rd0]

9. What percentage of the population of Iraq is age 16 and below?

What, like 60% or something absurd. Something we no longer heard about once the bombs started dropping. Lot of Iraqi kids have died.

[Lisa]

29. More than half the population is in their teens, or younger ...

Median age of the population is about 19 (in the US it's something like 35). Very lopsided population pyramid in Iraq -- 47% under age 15, while only 3% are older than 65. So, basically, most of the country were not yet born, or were kids, when Hussein was helped into power by US interests.

http://www.worldpop.org/prbdata.htm
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbsum.html

[slackmaster]

7. What was a kid doing in that house in the first place?

He should not have been there at all.

[sfecap]

14. Uh...maybe he lived there?

n/t

[slackmaster]

15. If two men the US Army was after came to stay at your house

Would you let your kids stay while they hid out there (if you had a choice that is)?

[Maeve]

16. The way it's been reported

Mustapha went everywhere with his father. At 14, he would be considered a man and learning how to follow in his father's footsteps.

[Set]

17. a 14 year old with a machinegun....

can hardly be considered "a kid"...

Read up about "child soldiers"...they have a reputation of being the firercest fighters. Take SS Division HitlerJugend...the folks that brought us the Malmedy Massacre. (true, they were generally 17 or older, but had been indoctrinated heavily as youths as to their "moral superiority", and that killing people was "OK".)

Give an 8 year old a machinegun, teach him how to use it, and tell him it's OK to kill people, and you end up with some scary people, and some major atrocities.

[Randi_Listener]

18. Machine gun?

I don't recall anything about the child having a machine gun or a chance against 10 anti-tank missiles.

[Set]

26. well...

I've seen news reports stating that he was left alive after the missiles were fired, and the other 3 were killed. I've also heard reports that he fired on US troops who were trying to enter the building. Maybe he had a flintlock musket, but considering the prevalence of real AK-47s over there, I think odds are excellent that he had a machinegun.

[Lisa]

30. the Nazi "Werwolf" resistance ...

A prof at my school has written a very interesting book about this. As Set says, fighting/terrorism (often by HJ kids, early teens or even younger, with leaders in their late teens or twenties) continued for years after the war ended. A neighbour of mine was in the HJ -- she didn't fall under their spell, but kids who maybe were unhappy at home and saw the movement as their real "family", or had fanatical parents and were trying to please them, were susceptible.

When one considers that warfare and deprived conditions have been the situation in Iraq for the past decade or more (counting the Iran-Iraq war too) -- there are probably quite a lot of unhappy, angry kids who literally don't know any other way of life. The peacekeepers going into Liberia will also be seeing this type of situation.

As for whether they still are "children" -- they are and they aren't, after what they've seen. It's possible to give them normal lives, as the UN and other aid organizations have found in Sierra Leone. But what normal person wouldn't need counselling after shooting a child, even one that was trying to kill you?

I asked a former marine about this. He said, "What do you see when you look at a 10-year-old with a gun? A gun." And he said he was grateful that he never had to make that call during his tour.

[bemildred]

8. Nothing like an inspiring example to give the resistance a boost.

:puke:

[zizzer]

12. Remember the ALamo!

What sorts of folk tales will told about this incident 10, 25 200 years from now?

Appologies to any Texas Dems (texas Repugs...fuck you anyway).

Zizzer

[Sterling]

25. Yeah now the Iraqis have a Davy Crockett

I thought about the Alamo yesterday when I heard about the six hour fire fight.

[Generic Other]

20. Brave kid

Whatever else you want to say about him, he died for his father's sins.

[fishnfla]

23. Whose sins did our sons die for??

?

[w13rd0]

27. Bush's father...

...namely the arming and support of Saddam Hussein...

[Exultant Democracy]

24. The Dead Drummer Boy

'MIDST tangled roots that lined the wild ravine,
Where the fierce fight raged hottest through the day,
And where the dead in scattered heaps were seen,
Amid the darkling forest's shade and sheen
Speechless in death he lay.
The setting sun, which glanced athwart the place
In slanting lines, like amber-tinted rain,
Fell sidewise on the drummer's upturned face,
Where Death had left his gory finger's trace
In one bright crimson stain.
The silken fringes of his once bright eye
Lay like a shadow on his cheek so fair;
His lips were parted by a long-drawn sigh,
That with his soul had mounted to the sky
On some wild martial air.
No more his hand the fierce tattoo shall beat,
The shrill reveille, or the long roll's call,
Or sound the charges, when, in smoke and heat
Of fiery onset, foe with foe shall meet,
And gallant men shall fall.
Yet may be in some happy home, that one,
A mother, reading from the list of dead,
Shall chance to view the name of her dead son,
And move her lips to say, "God's will be done!"
And bow in grief her head.
But more than this what tongue shall tell his story?
Perhaps his boyish longings were for fame.
He lived, he died; and so memento mori.
Enough if on the page of War and Glory
Some hand has writ his name.

[GalleryGod]

28. Bush better double the detail around The Twins:

Jenna Slut:puke:and Barbie Ho:silly: