Sons' Deaths a Turning Point in Campaign
WASHINGTON — The deaths of Saddam Hussein's powerful sons Tuesday is a badly needed boost for the Bush administration, a major strategic gain for U.S. forces battling Iraqi resistance and a boon for the fragile new governing council in Iraq.
The raid in the northern city of Mosul, perhaps the most dramatic event in Iraq since the toppling of Hussein's statue in downtown Baghdad more than three months ago, signals a psychological turning point, according to U.S. officials and experts on Iraq, because the United States has proved that it can achieve key postwar goals.
The killing of Uday and Qusai Hussein in a six-hour siege might also be more important in the long term than capturing or killing the aging former Iraqi leader.
"As long as his sons lived, there was always the danger that the dynasty would try to make a comeback. Symbolically, it's very, very important to have eliminated the sons," said Henri J. Barkey, an expert on Iraq and a former member of the State Department's policy planning staff.
Three years ago, Hussein anointed as his political heir his second son, Qusai, who ran military and intelligence units for his father, according to Amatzia Baram, an expert on Iraq and a fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.
In a brief written statement, the White House said Hussein's two sons would "no longer cast a shadow of hate on Iraq."
But officials and analysts differed over the role the brothers might have played in planning or coordinating attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Some said the brothers were spending too much time hiding to be involved, while others said the two remained active.
The attack is "clearly important politically. But it could be operationally too," deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley told reporters.
There is little evidence of centralized command in the daily guerrilla attacks on U.S. forces, many of which have occurred in the so-called Sunni triangle north of Baghdad.
Hadley said it is unlikely but not inconceivable that Hussein's sons played a coordinating role.
But Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst now at the National Defense University in Washington, said, "This is the big break the U.S. needed.
"It doesn't stop all the violence against us, but this could cut it significantly on the widely held assumption that Uday and Qusai were encouraging or running some of the groups that have been attacking us."
