I have, however, been disillusioned by the United States' handling of the post-Cold War world, the Iraq issue in particular.

The Bush administration promptly repudiated the Kyoto Protocol on the environment and global warming on assuming power and proceeded to armtwist the world into exempting its military personnel from prosecution for war crimes. With the Iraq fiasco, the US credibility has sunk to new lows, dragging with it its ally, the United Kingdom.

Last Wednesday, Lt-Gen Ricardo Sanchez of the US Army gave a blow-by-blow account of the five-hour operation that culminated in the deaths of Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, and two other people. 

The operation went thus: The US army personnel received information on Saddam’s sons’ hideout in the northern city of Mosul, the wife and children of the house’s owner are evacuated at dawn and at 10 am, US army personnel raid the house. 

There is resistance from the occupants using "small arms fire" from the second floor and the US army calls in Apache attack helicopters with laser guided missiles. The missiles rip through the house and the triumphant soldiers rush in to retrieve their grisly trophies.

The Hussein boys were a brutal and murderous lot. Many Iraqis apparently considered Saddam Hussein a saint by the sons’ standards. 

Uday, the elder of the two, is reputed to have had a severely malicious streak in him. He reportedly clubbed his father’s favourite bodyguard to death in full view of guests at a party for procuring Saddam a mistress. The father sent him abroad and, in his absence, the younger brother stepped up in the succession line.

Upon his return, Uday got so jealous of his brother’s influential position that he turned fiendishly vicious. To spite Qusay, he would abduct his brother’s girlfriends, rape them, then brand them with a horseshoe shaped red-hot iron. 

Not to be outdone, Qusay organised genocides on behalf of his old man. His favourite pastime was experimenting on new torture methods on captured Iraqi dissidents and others whose faces he did not like.

The US Army understandably needed this "victory" as a moral booster for their personnel in Iraq who are steadily losing lives daily from local guerrillas. 

The American use of missiles to blow up the Husseins, however, was excessive and unnecessary. Knowing who the targets were and what the information and propaganda value of their capture would be, the US missed the opportunity to demonstrate to the Iraqis and the world their benign intentions of restoring law and justice in Iraq.

In their hideout, the Hussein sons did not pose any immediate and present danger to the US military or Iraqi citizens and, at the very least, the US army had the option of staging a commando raid on the hideout to capture them alive. 

The military had been briefed well in advance and had the time to prepare a "civilian response" to apprehend the two. Had the Husseins chosen to take their own lives rather than be captured, then both ways, the US military and administration would have come off smelling sweet.

Airing the bloody and gruesome photographs of the dead Husseins on TV was callous and insensitive. It was bad enough that the US military did not exercise better judgment in executing the two when they could have captured them alive. To compound the mistake by gloating over and displaying the disfigured bodies to the public was tasteless and unprofessional. 

During the war, the US protested bitterly when Iraqi TV showed images of captured US soldiers. In victory, the US is acting worse. Dictator or not, it must be harrowing for Saddam, the parent, and the sons’ families, to see the bloodied remains of their kin paraded before the world as a battle prizes. Whether Uday and Qusay were regarded as war criminals or civilian fugitives, the US military handling of their deaths was offensive and gross.

The US can no longer proclaim noble intentions in invading Iraq without UN’s sanction. The post-war Iraq is entirely different from what the Washington pro-war hawks had sold to the American public and the world.

US soldiers are dying daily from guerrilla ambushes. The Bush administration is now inextricably enmeshed in the Weapons of Mass Destruction mess, initially fronted as the justification for war, but now exposed as the sham that it was.

The US-British coalition has eroded the goodwill it enjoyed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Increasingly, the world will resent its arrogant flexing of economic and military muscles at any perceived opposition to it. 

The Iraqi debacle has exposed the alliance’s underlying selfish pursuits in its global endeavours. Barely three months after the war, its proponents are fighting for their political survival from the repercussions of their ill-advised decisions.

Gradually, the world will listen more keenly to the European Union and less to the US/British alliance on matters of ethics and governance. China will increase its attraction as an economic and military alternative to the US for Third World countries. 

The Anglo-Saxon alliance will be viewed as economic and military bullies, to be feared but not respected or trusted ever again.

E-mail: corporates@africaonline.co.ke 

Mr Murunga is the Business Development Manager, Corporate Technical Services Ltd.

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