There are only a few people on this earth whose deaths I would celebrate without any remorse. Uday and Qusay are two.
Off the top of my head, the rest of the list includes:
Saddam
Osama (and, frankly, any of his henchmen)
Mullah Omar
Castro
Kim Jong Il
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Arafat
Lileks: “Yes, I hope they suffered, and yes, I want heads on pikes.”
John from Iberian Notes (who just added us to his blogroll): “In case you haven’t seen it yet, Qusay and Oday look like they’re well on their way to their 72 virgin sheep, goats, and donkeys in hell.”
OK. But just for laughs, let’s check out the reaction from famously anti-American journalist Robert Fisk:
So they are dead. Or are they?
Conspiracy theorists, get out your tinfoil hats.
A 14-year-old child killed by the Americans – one of the four dead – might be one of Saddam’s grandsons.
A, yes, a child. Reared on the blood of how many other Iraqi children?
The two men obviously fought fiercely against the 200 American troops who surrounded the house.
Must . . . portray . . . legendary sadists as brave underdogs . . .
[T]his is the same Task Force 20 that blasted to death the occupants of a convoy heading for the Syrian border earlier this month, a convoy whose travellers were meant to include Saddam himself and even the two sons supposedly killed yesterday. The victims turned out to be only smugglers.
And smugglers headed to Syria must be doers of good, no?
And American intelligence – the organisation that failed to predict events of 11 September, 2001 –
Note that he doesn’t say our intel was bad before the Iraq war, since it’s fashionable to say our intel then was good, at least when it said its prior conclusions were bad.
[I]n a family obsessed, with good reason, with their own personal security, would Uday and Qusay really be together?
Perhaps they were running out of places to hide? But to Fisk, they must be all-knowing and wise, and we the fools.
If [Saddam] and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish – on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans.
Um, well, except that we will kill anyone who fights us, and plus they would lose the only chance they’re likely soon to get to build a free society.
But Fisk’s dreams die hard.