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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (108067)	7/25/2003 8:13:28 PM
From: laura_bush	Respond to of 281500

Excellent links, Mr. Snyder. Have you viewed the evening network and cable network news broadcasts this evening? MSNBC is airing the video. The corpses look like props in a Jason Halloween movie.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (108067)	7/25/2003 8:42:05 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Parading the dead By Alexandra Fouché BBC News Online Releasing the pictures of dead bodies is never an innocuous gesture, and in the case of Uday and Qusay Hussein it has generated huge controversy. There have been a number of precedents in history where dead leaders were displayed in one form or another to convince people of their passing. The practice goes back at least as far the Greeks, who put Alexander the Great's body on show in 323 BC as proof of death. "When Alexander the Great died at the young age of 33, they embalmed his body in honey (displayed in a glass coffin) and preserved it for as long as they could so people could come and see his body," Fordham University journalism Professor Paul Levinson told Reuters news agency. Two millennia later, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in a violent revolution and later executed along with his wife Elena in December 1989. The picture of his corpse was then released to the Romanian people. People who put out those images are looking for a symbolic marker, like pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad Timothy Garton Ash, historian "The picture of Ceausescu had a huge impact as in the case of Iraq; only then did people know he was really dead," historian Timothy Garton Ash told BBC News Online. "It became almost an icon, confirming the revolution. Everyone knows that image," he said. People who put out those images "are looking for a symbolic marker, like pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad," he said. Symbolic The big difference with the Iraqi situation, Mr Garton Ash said, is that in the case of the Ceausescus, the Romanians themselves published the pictures, whereas in Iraq's case the decision was made by the occupying authorities. One Swiss commentator asked whether the picture of the bearded Qusay, vaguely reminiscent of the dead Che Guevara, might risk becoming a similar kind of icon for Arab youth. Indeed, the site where Che Guevara's body was found in Bolivia is reported to have become the focus of worship by local people. Uday and Qusay's deaths may now be turned into symbols of Iraqi resistance and reflect badly on US methods in Iraq. In Romania's case, releasing the picture of their dead leader "did fix in everybody's mind how violent the revolution was - unlike other revolutions in the rest of Central Europe," Mr Garton Ash said. Risky business The BBC's Pentagon correspondent, Nick Childs, says the decision to release the photos have had other disadvantages. "On the ground there is the risk that this will actually inflame rather than dismay some of the more hardline Baathist loyalists who have been continuing the resistance," our correspondent says. And it is interesting that the official authority that has released the pictures is not the Pentagon, but the Coalition Provisional Authority, the civilian authority in Baghdad, he says. "I think that is a deliberate attempt to try to some extent to distance the US military from this." Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (108067)	7/25/2003 9:14:55 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Jacob Snyder; Re: "That was quick work, very efficient. Think about it; they must have had a plastic surgeon on standby, to get the job done this quickly. They must have anticipated Iraqi disbelief ..." It's not plastic surgery, it's "embalming". Americans like to have their corpses prettied up before they're dumped in a hole. That applies to the military just as to the civilians, though in wartime, the amount of effort is considerably reduced. I would have to guess that the US military has a hell of a lot more experience with mortuary science than you give them credit for. What the US did to the Saddam sons was probably exactly what they would have done to US servicemen who died in Iraq. This may not fly in Iraq (it's basically "playing" with the dead), but, God love us, it's what we do with bodies. (Bilow expects to be cremated and secretly flushed down the toilet in his favorite bar.) With a couple or three guys dying every day in Iraq, the military must have morticians there to prepare the remains to US standards. I'd love to find the US mil-spec on embalming, ("cheeks not to be sunken more than 1/8 inch as measured medially between the jawline and temple, exceptions only for corpses who were very skinny while alive ..."), but I get so many hits that there's too many to dig through. Here's some examples: Johnny Johnson, director of the West Coast Air Force Port Mortuary, displays an embalming "trocar" in the preparation room at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. ... The mortuary's staff of seven provides services that include cosmetology, clothing, casketing and escorting to the final resting place. ... af.mil -- Carl P.S. Go here for more hits on .mil sites: google.com

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (108067)	7/25/2003 9:48:04 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

Caesar did it, why can't we? 54 BC: Finally surrounded by Caesar's army while holed up in the hilltop fortress of Alesia in Gaul, Vercingetorix' army slowly starved as they watched Caesar build first one palisade of stakes around his refuge, then another around both himself and the Gallic army as a defense against other gauls who came to reinforce Vercingetorix and raise the siege. Grim and singleminded of purpose, Caesar's dour Romans kept up the siege for over a year. With himself and his men facing starvation, Vercingetorix eventually surrendered. The brave old warrior was led captive back to rome where he rotted in a dungein for several years. Vercingetorix was allowed to leave his dark prison to stand in the sunshine one more time, but only to walk in disgrace and chains as a foreign captive king in Caesar's triumph. After this ostentatious display of captured booty and enslaved humanity put on for the entertainment of the Roman people, Vercingetorix was ritually strangled.