The military top brass was reluctant to approve release of the photographs, citing the military tradition of respecting enemy dead, concern over appearing to gloat over the bloody, damaged bodies, and fear of setting a precedent that could easily backfire for families of American soldiers. In the past, Washington has responded angrily to any publication of photographs of American dead.
But the Pentagon's civilian leadership ordered the publication of the photographs, arguing that they would help convince sceptical Iraqis that the brothers - two of the most feared figures of Saddam's regime - were dead and therefore sap the will of resistance groups fighting a guerrilla war against US troops.
It's interesting to see that the response of the military was smarter than that of their civilian masters. There's something distinctly medieval about the release of the images...and this from the same politicians who bleated so loudly when the Arab news channels showed photos of dead soldiers. Remember old-man Rumsfeld crying about the Geneva Convention at the time? I wonder what happened to it in the last three months.
