From The Sydney Morning Herald, 7/26/03:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/25/1059084209781.html
Pictures of dictator's sons stir the sceptics
By Julian Borger in New York
Grisly photographs of the corpses of Uday and Qusay Hussein have been
greeted with scepticism and disbelief in Baghdad, amid misgivings of
senior United States officers who feared their publication set a
dangerous precedent.
The release of the pictures on Thursday was held up by more than 24
hours by disagreements within the Pentagon over the wisdom of making
them public.
But the Pentagon's civilian leadership eventually ordered their
publication, arguing this would help convince sceptical Iraqis that
the brothers were dead and thus sap the will of resistance groups.
On the streets of Baghdad the release of the macabre photographs was
greeted with deep scepticism.
After suffering decades of propaganda under Saddam, many people refuse
to believe anything they learn from the news media.
Instead, they believe reliable information comes only from word of
mouth, passed on from friends and relatives.
This provides fertile ground for the wildfire spread of rumour and
conspiracy theories.
Less than 48 hours after the deaths of the brothers in Mosul, the
first conspiracy theories about the event were born in the capital,
400 kilometres to the south.
Sitting in a teahouse in Karrada, Ali Subhi al-Bedrani, 31, explained
that the corpses on display to a worldwide audience were doubles of
Uday and Qusay.
"They are not in Iraq," he said breathlessly.
"They are in Syria. They left their doubles behind. They have doubles
just like Saddam had doubles - and so the Americans have killed the
wrong people."
Other men in the teahouse disagreed with Mr al-Bedrani.
Saadoun Wadi, 58, said talk of doubles was fanciful.
However, he was convinced the photographs could not be real and that
Uday and Qusay were alive.
"They are both in America with their father," he said.
There is a widely held belief in Iraq that Saddam and the US have a
long and close friendship.
The theory has its origins in the US's open backing for Saddam in the
1980s.
Downtown, in the Zein barbershop, half the men there dismissed the
pictures as forgeries because the dictator's sons were elsewhere when
the attack occurred.
In Spain, in fact.
The men looked too fat, one said.
They were not burnt the way the first news reports said they might be.
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Now what?
Harry
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