Uday body, before and after “U.S. reconstruction”

BAGHDAD, July 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In a controversial move, the U.S. military allowed reporters to film bodies it said of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's two sons, raising a world-wide controversy over taking the grisly pictures of the bullet-riddled mutilated bodies to the air. 

The faces of the bodies of notorious Uday and Qusay were waxy after undergoing cosmetic facial reconstruction in an effort to make them resemble their former selves.

A U.S. military official at the morgue in a U.S. military base at Baghdad airport, where the bodies are being held, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the practice of applying putty to the faces was normal and that there was no intention to deceive.

On Friday, U.S. military morticians and forensic pathologists told journalists that each body had more than 20 bullet wounds, but there was no evidence the men committed suicide

Observers told IslamOnline.net that the move might be meant to alleviate the "gruesomeness" of fatal wounds the Hussein sons sustained in a fire battle with the U.S. occupation forces Tuesday, July 22.

The faces of the two looked less bloody than in photographs released Thursday, July 24, by the U.S. military, but the torsos bore dozens of bullet holes and shrapnel wounds sustained in the Tuesday tense battle.

Qusay's beard had been shaved off and his moustache left to match his appearance before spending three months on the run.

A wound in Uday's face had been repaired, but there was still a hole in the top of his head.

Qusay body, before and after “ U.S. reconstruction”

Old Autopsy incisions were also visible on Uday's left leg, where doctors removed an eight-inch (20cm) long bar that had been inserted after a 1996 assassination attempt.

While their bodies bearing the scars of the battle that killed them, the faces of the two brothers looked like wax-work museum models.

Analysts said allowing media in for filming the photos is an attempt by Washington to make believe Uday and Qusay – number two and three on the U.S. "most wanted" list" – are of the deposed leader's sons and end any skepticism over their death.

But allowing bodies of dead bodies to be filmed proved provocative, especially in the Arab region.

Some commentators lambasted the United States over releasing the photos, especially that Washington had protested when Arab television broadcast pictures of U.S. soldiers killed by Iraqis forces during the invasion.

After the Arab channel Al-Jazeera aired a video tape of the bodies wearing bloodstained camouflage uniforms and some appeared to have bullet wounds to the head, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the move was a violation of the Geneva conventions.

But on Thursday, Rumsfeld said the decision to release the photos of the bloodied and bruised corpses was difficult, but "I feel it was the right decision and I'm glad I did it."

The White House also defended the decision to release the pictures, rejecting comparisons with Iraq's wartime photos of slain U.S. soldiers shown by al-Jazeera.

However, with threats to avenge the deaths of the two brothers, whom Washington believes may have been coordinating the anti-U.S. guerrilla-style attacks, there was no sign of letup in the opposition to the U.S. occupation forces.

Many Iraqis said what they rather need is an end to occupation of their oil-rich county and setting up a national representative government at the helm after years of tyranny under Saddam.

Tens of thousands of Shiites converged on the holy city of Najaf to hear firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr rail against the U.S. occupation.

Compounding the problem of the Shiites' emerging protests against the occupation, a group of hooded gunmen describing themselves as Saddam's Fedayeen militia vowed to avenge the deaths of Uday and Qusay in a video broadcast Thursday.

Five U.S soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the raid Tuesday, four of them in the area around Mosul where Uday and Qusay, holed up in a mansion, made their last stand.  

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