Should I have been surprised that television news media - liberal or conservative - would begin this morning crooning a sonnet to impatience, decrying the fact that between sixteen and twenty hours seems to not have been enough time to catheterize from every last Iraqi his shock, doubt or ingrained fear of Qusai and Udai, whose father's historical insuperability won him the nickname of "The Vampire"? Amazingly, some commentators' complaints practically share the same sentence as reports identifying major Iraqi newspapers as without time to even carry the image in yesterday's editions - let alone the fact that some portions of the country may not even have received word.

"Nearsighted" is too complimentarily academic for this; "silly" and "foolish" are more apt. In addition to the unrealistic expectation of countrywide, societal events to complete themselves on a single daily news cycle, a variety of illogical cynics' counterpoints have popped up within a short time in an attempt to grapple with the painfully obvious.

The brothers had reconstructive surgery. The Cossack beards weren't enough? This seems far more like urban myth irresponsibly repeated by news personalities. Minor cosmetic surgery requires less than a month to heal - but by whom under a shattered Ba'athist rule, and if so, to what end as far as witnesses are concerned? The faces of the bodies look like men as if they'd received, by the disfigurement of injury and the bloat of death, a grim cosmetic alteration from the Allies themselves. Still, the likeness is there. At my amateur's glance, Qusai's profile and Udai's characteristically stubbly hairline are both matches. A forensic expert, if called upon, could easily correlate more features, accounting for pathological disformation.

The United States is hypocritical to broadcast photos of the dead when it chastised al Jazeera for airing tapes of American dead in March. I'm a legal layman, but one only needs to spend a few minutes sorting out the facts separating the two circumstances. Laymen need not be careless or, by vocally accusing the administration of a double-standard, idiotic. Al Jazeera, as some media voices have conveniently forgotten, accepted Iraqi footage of soldiers after being taken as prisoners of war, while under interrogation, and then, presumably, after subsequent (and illegal) execution - clear violations of the Geneva Convention, which is what the United States objected to. Udai and Qusai, as Eugene Volokh has deftly examined, are quite arguably understood between common rules of war and American executive order as enemy combatants. These enemy combatants, of course, resisted capture and fought against uniformed soldiers until death - they were never POWs. The public display of killed enemy combatants, to the best of my knowledge, does in no way violate any international treaty. Shorthand? Two completely different situations. Furthermore, the justification for Allied release of post-mortem photography is quite substantial: with presumably hundreds of bodies of Iraqi fighters accumulated in the weeks of fighting, only Udai and Qusai's bodies have been publicized (whereas the Ba'athists trumpeted every last killing they could), the evidence of the death of these two men vital to completing societal restoration in Iraq.

Udai and Qusai would have been of more use to the Allies alive than dead: This is purely speculative and not worth much in factual argumentation, introducing a bit of wishful thinking into the reality of how helpful any hardened Ba'athist would be to authorities, let alone the second and third most powerful. Nothing we have learned from the Pentagon or the military over the past three months indicates any pattern of capitulatory success with high-ranking regime officials. But this sidesteps what actually happened: the 101st was attacked by the brothers, who left no option but combative defeat. Only time-travel and daydream second-guessing can manage any further pursuit of alternative outcomes. This a line of reasoning makes for contrarian politics and little else.

Like any man who hopes to remain both patient and sane, I'll wait for the Husseins' elimination to settle. Weeks will be necessary to observe any noticeable change in behavior from Ba'athist holdouts and acceptance from law-abiding Iraqis. In the meantime, use this and other reasoned cautionaries you find among blogs to ward off emotional panic instigated by the media.

And stay away from daytime cable television news. Lord, to what lengths they must go to fill the hours.

UPDATE: No, the Hussein boys weren't coming out alive. Jonathan Foreman elucidates us on both the situation and its expert handling by American troops:

Whether the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein were self-inflicted or not, the military operation to capture them was immaculate. There were no American deaths, 10 minutes of warnings were given over loudspeakers, and it was the Iraqis who opened fire. So sensitive was the American approach, they even rang the bell of the house before entering.

The neat operation fits squarely with the tenor of the whole American campaign, contrary to the popular negative depiction of its armed forces: that they are spoilt, well-equipped, steroid-pumped, crudely patriotic yokels who are trigger-happy yet cowardly in their application of overwhelming force.

They rang the doorbell. Udai and Qusai might have even found their way into a miraculous lifetime detention, depending upon whichever philosophical side of the Atlantic Iraqi authorities, who would presumably try them, fell.

Read the article - it's tonic to a good soul peturbed by relentless, faithless attacks on American integrity and intentions (From Instapundit).

I glanced at this resplendent report from the Weekly Standard early in the morning but didn't have time to read it until now, by which time Glenn Reynolds had plugged it. And for good reason: another mark of success by Paul Bremer's Provisional Authority is the infant free press bursting from Iraq. Two points are worth nothing. First, the authenticity of the reporting derived from the honesty of the views:

Opinions on the Coalition Provisional Authority, for instance, run the gamut from supportive to critical. Take Al-Aswaq, the daily newspaper of the Iraqi Industry Federation. One of its recent editorials asked, "Isn't it better to assist the council in doing its job than looking for reasons and justifications to make it fail?" A news article in another issue reported a spokesman for the Shiite Al-Sadr organization saying "As of today, we have no qualms with the members of the council, but they should remember that they are to serve Iraq's interests . . ."

In contrast, an editorial from Al-Rassed, a daily published by the Islamic Education Center in Noor City, said "The implementation of democracy by the American administration suffers from hypocrisy because of its reluctance to allow the Iraqi people to practice democracy by selecting its representatives even for the sake of experiment."

Security is also a concern. A newspaper called Tareeq Al-Sha'b printed an open letter to Gen. John Abizaid (who recently replaced Tommy Franks as the head of Central Command). The letter writers noted that the International Food Program has been a recent target of thieves, and asked for more troops to protect aid shipments: "Why don't you redeploy [American troops] in areas from where they withdrew in order to put an end to looting food intended for millions of Iraqis?"

Reasoned, constructively critical opinions that sound as if they could easily have come from the pages of the Washington Post? or Wall Street Journal.

Second, Paul Bremer is following wonderfully in the hard-nosed footsteps of Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan, Douglas MacArthur, by reminding countrymen that their freedom - in the midst of unextinguished warfare and the poisonous danger of nascent self-government - is still in a brace for its own good, and that no one is allowed to abuse a fragile freedom of speech in order to subvert it:

On July 13, Abdul Sattar Shalan, the editor of Baghdad's Al-Mustaqila (The Independent), wrote that his paper would reveal the names of locals who were cooperating with Americans, "so . . . the people can issue their verdict on them." He went on to say that "spilling the blood of spies is a religious and patriotic requirement."

Under an order issued by chief American administrator L. Paul Bremer in June, the Iraqi media are forbidden from inciting violence or ethnic hatred. So it came as no surprise when coalition forces stormed Al-Mustaqila's offices on Tuesday and shut down the paper.

Bremer's office has also closed Sawt Baghdad (Voice of Baghdad), a Baghdad radio station, because of its ties to Mohamed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, the self-proclaimed "mayor of Baghdad." (Al-Zubaidi had been encouraging people to rob Baghdad's banks.) In another incident, a newspaper in Najaf associated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq was shut down for making inflammatory comments, too.

In time, a common good will be naturally established by Iraqis to shame and ostracize purveyors of hatred and upheaval, a protectorate reward of civil society. Until then, we should be proud of the steady achievements of both occupier and occupied.

It's comforting to know that the Bush administration is thinking along the same lines as my common-sense argument for reassuring the Iraqis and silencing any fringe-bound critics with incontrovertible, post-mortem evidence of Udai and Qusai Hussein.

Will the two be more powerful as wraiths? No: only on the wings of philosophical fervor can a leader become a martyr and as uncovered day by day, the Husseins' Ba'athist regime was a Fertile Crescent mafia that had reverted to the base instincts of bestial will. Dead dons, to be certain, do not persist in memory. Thugs and lackies won't lose time worshiping a would-be saint when they could be rowing to be the replacement for his erstwhile eminence.

The two beasts are slain. Now, CPA must mass-disseminate the photographs for Iraq's good citizens and outlaws alike to study and consider.

Preppy ponders the long-term significance of the Baghdad Boys' bullet-ridden ticket to Hell.

Here's my deduction: Saddam is dead, and has been since the beginning of the war. Ba'athists, supported to a significant extent by the Hussein brothers, primarily Qusai, have been perpetuating Saddam like a brand name. A twisted Betty Crocker or Ronald McDonald comes to mind: as long as the specter of Saddam survives, fear among the populace remains. The sons, never diabolical impresarios like their father, were nevertheless ably powerful political figures and commanders and could muster some semblance of a central authority over the last months.

With yesterday's deaths, the Ba'athist component of disorder in Iraq will be without the venerable bloodline, and should crumble in a month or two. Some members will try to vanish; some will surrender; some may struggle in vain for position on a now-dead hierarchy, perhaps drawing undue attention to themselves; some may take a vertical transfer downward, join the criminal elements of the country's unrest now or else wait for the Iraqi livelihood to stabilize and then try their hand at organized crime.

Foreign terrorists - the "al Qaeda-types" we hear referenced weekly - and the aforementioned jailbird louts have no reason to cease operations beyond a natural, largely temporary reaction of awe and self-preservation brought about by the Allies defeating Hussein's sons. But these particular forces are, according to Allied accounts, with neither substantial organization nor specific, strategic purpose - they're just a Near East subsidiary of Damage, Inc., willing to cause mayhem for a blurry "Jihad" or kicks and grins. Or both.

The occupation must deal with Islamists and overarmed criminals in turn, but I would be confident that the Ba'ath Party will be out of the insurgency business by mid-fall.

A LOOK BACK TO THIS POST FROM MID-FALL, 2003: Ba'athists would "be out of the insurgency business" unless, of course, they joined forces with Islamists and criminals. Even so, reconstruction continues, faster in areas outside the Sunni Triangle but across the country nonetheless. Without a superpower patron, the terror forces inside Iraq will inevitably lose.

Leave the iron on? That's nothing:

Papers among thousands of files captured from the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, claim tons of live Second World War munitions were buried in concrete bunkers beneath the runways of Schoenefeld airport in East Berlin. It is now the main destination for discount airlines, such as Ryanair, and numerous charter companies.

Not only did the commissars intern munitions beneath the runways, but also entire Nazi fighter planes, all fuelled and fully bombed-up, according to the Stasi.

[...]

Experts believe it entirely feasible that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, with Berlin littered with millions of tons of unexploded ordnance, the Soviets could well have pressured local officials to move to clear the airfield as swiftly as possible.

To where? Easy:

Berlin, with its sandy, dry soil, was perfect for the bunker-building of the Third Reich. Hundreds of thousands of them were constructed during the 12-year lifespan of the Nazi government: for every one metre of building above ground in modern-day Berlin, there are three metres below ground.

Bunkers are being discovered every day and a group called Underground Berlin has turned several of them into tourist attractions.

We can find a modern corollary. If only twelve years - but six in relative peacetime - were needed to build what can only be described as a city writhing with a maze of bunkers that have not been fully accounted for in seventy years, imagine what hideaways Saddam Hussein was able to construct, with the help of none other than German engineers, after two decades. All this in a country the size of California, dominated by forbidding landscape. Four months shrinks in that scale a bit, doesn't it?

Megan McArdle wrote to recuse herself from opining on postwar Iraq, but opined nevertheless:

The narrative of WWII in most American minds seems to go something like this: we won, the nations formerly ground under the Nazi heel rose up joyfully to greet us, the Germans realized the error of their ways, we slapped the Marshall plan together a couple of weeks later, and soon Europe and America were joining hands across the Atlantic to form NATO, singing "It's a Small World After All" as everyone gazed soulfully into the bright quasi-socialist future. . .

In short, the years 1945-1955 seem to have been edited out of the popular imagination.

[...]

To be sure, I'm extremely disturbed that the Bush administration seems to have had absolutely no plan for what to do with Iraq after we got it. Given the exigencies of war, I would consider it par for the course if they'd developed an unworkable plan that had to be chucked and replaced -- but it looks to me as if no one in the administration gave any thought whatsoever to any scenario except the Iraqis joyfully rising up to greet us, installing a representative democracy, and sending representatives to Washington to join hands with the cabinet for a chorus of "It's a Small World After All". . . I find this extremely disturbing.

But that doesn't mean we're DOOMED! DOOMED! DOOMED! We may be, of course. But I'm withholding comment until the matter's a little clearer.

Couldn't resist?

The easiest way to gauge a pundit's possession of any knowledge on major, American postwar reconstruction is how eager they are to call the slightest bit of unrest, economic distress and political disarray "a mess." That indicates an utter lack of perspective. And I'm not speaking of doctorate-level education: One does not need to read too deeply to understand the difficulty and length of the reclamation process.

I disagree with the idea that the White House wasn't ready, postwar, with a general objective. True, right up to the fall of Hussein's Baghdad, the Bush administration was technically equivocal about setting up a pluralist, federalist democracy - but for good reason: Remember, these are days where humanitarian concerns against Saddam were immediately struck from the germinating 1441 in UN negotiations, with a Security Council populated in part by dictatorships. Can you imagine, Megan, the international uproar if Bush stated, from the beginning, that Iraq was to become a modern, capitalist democracy?

We currently have no way of knowing what the administration had specifically planned for beyond press releases. Furthermore, having A Plan^TM that is intended to work on the first try truly does entail a will to control the tactical situation so it becomes congruent with the strategic vision. That means telling people what to do with few reservations. Again: these days, there's room for a Paul Bremer, but not a Douglas MacArthur. The Iraqis may be generally grateful, but they'll expect much more latitude than the Germans and the Japanese did when the press and the region is standing by to encourage them. MacArthur ordered the Diet and PM to undertake policies; they haggled, but SCAP had the veto. I suspect that on many policy issues, Bremer will firmly - but politely - ask.

The sons of Hussein, dead: confirmed. A major victory. The only people happier than us about this will be the Iraqis.

UPDATE: An Iraqi "walk-in" informant led to the final battle. Regardless of a reward, that is quite an important gesture of cooperation.

UPDATE II: Think of Iraq as a bit like 1930s America - just tonight, Baghdad citizens celebrated by firing live ammunition into the air. They're rugged people, not least because the last twenty and thirty years of their lives have been in a certain hell. So how to broadcast the confirmation of the sons' deaths? Post-mortem photographs of Udai and Qusai, distributed as leaflets, would not only fail to offend the vast majority of the populace but would be welcomed - by all. And celebrated.

Andrew Sullivan is firmly back in the optimist's seat. It's an enjoyable and rightful place for him, as Sullivan is a man who truly believes in the foreign mission of George Bush. It's reassuring to me: for a brief time in May, I was beginning to wonder.

You've got to hand it to Fox News for fair and balanced address of the issues. This evening's Special Report with Brit Hume presented a pundit panel including the Nation's David Corn. The Nation is a leftist magazine best described as "anti-anti-Communist" and "always good for a laugh" by William F. Buckley and Andrew Sullivan, respectively.

Corn was polite, certainly - but he came from a critical left still eager to pounce on what's left of the uranium flap. Most importantly, his comments regarding the slightly facetious assertion by the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol that the past two weeks may have been an adroit trap set by Karl Rove.

Essentially, Corn introduced a dialectic disengage with uranium: agreed, the White House produced intelligence papers that not only knock down suspicions of whether Saddam even had a worrying nuclear ambition but also make clear for the public that the Niger documents were not the only source for conclusions to be drawn. He didn't try to push the issue much. What he did, however, was delicately leave uranium behind and move on to exploit the next uncertainly: Iraqi links with al Qaeda. The matter was different, but only like a Mad-Lib. No absolutely incriminating evidence; therefore, Corn offered that Bush must have lied.

If Corn is to be taken as a stormcrow, the left is soon to dash out of the way of the uranium accusation's collapse and become immediately acrimonious about terrorist links instead, as if they had not been proven wrong and intellectually dishonest on yet another subject. Absent any head-hanging for all the off-key prewar predictions, we have every reason to believe this failure won't dent their collective conscience, either.

When I read the ABC story - grumblers in the 3rd Infantry Division giving out their names - I knew it was only a question of time:

The retaliation from Washington was swift.

"It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers."

And they should. Military tradition dictates a public silence of critiques - from the sullen loudmouths to the legimately worried. Modern military history presents far worse conditions for soldiers, such as the 101st Airborne holding Bastogne, Belgium against the uncompromising German armored advance during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and January 1945. Soldiers stayed in fixed positions, exposed to frigid wintertime conditions for weeks without adequate clothing, ammunition, food or supplies. No one enjoyed the merciless trial of the elements and the aggregates - but not a single one surviving will to this day make an admission of despair, let alone accept that they needed to be "rescued" from George S. Patton's 3rd Army. Or be sent home.

The Army will be far better without soldiers who sought out a television crew to complain about their mission.