ODAI AND QUSAI, BLOWN AWAI, WHAT ELSE DO I HAVE TO SAI?

Looks like we killed Saddam's hotshot sons in a gun/rocket battle.

the U.S. military ... claim[s] their deaths will blunt Iraqi resistance to the American occupation.

Well, um... capturing them alive would have been a good help, possibly leading us to better information as to the nature of the resistance facing our troops (as in, we don't know if the Baathists are behind all of it or not). Killing them--whether or not the status of the operation demanded it--won't seem that helpful to the general situation, I don't think. The military should, of course, check to see if the boys were getting around Iraq carrying fake ID's . . . children of heads of state tend to have fake ID's.

Kidding aside, they were a couple of bad dudes who wont be terribly missed (mind you, they are examples of a lack of an estate tax in action). But also, why does this necessarily make things easier? If Saddam is out there, behind the bulk of the resistance, and knows his sons have been "terminated with extreme prejudice" by our boys, wouldn't he up the level of active hostilities? Isn't this how Batman got started? Case in point: in this fall's run-up to the Iraq war, Bush referred to Saddam as "the guy who tried to kill my dad", and *woosh*, we have a few hundred thousand young men and women over there, and we're killing Saddam's kids. Granted, in the past Saddam hasn't always shown qualms regarding offing members of his own family, but still.