Photo finish: Saddam's sons, or Rent-a-Corpses?

You couldn't have written it better as a movie script:

Just as that messy WMD-related suicide in Britain was threatening to topple the whole blood-on-its-hands Blair government for lying its way and ours into war, America's fortunes in Iraq suddenly, almost miraculously reversed, with the unexpected propaganda bonanza and military windfall of two bearded bodies they expect us to believe are Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, magically slain when U.S. troops stormed a luxury villa after a surprise tip.

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So, despite the feds' admittedly violating Pentagon policy, humanitarian convention, civilized tradition or popular custom by circulating such gruesome war photographs, they released pix of two gory and grisly Arabic corpses they claim are – were – Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, dead at last.

These photos are, says our gummint, "proof."

Yeah, right ... and how convenient. Look how it distracts us from that nagging WMD question. An amazing diversion, no? Well, smack me on the butt and label me a Doubting Thomasina, but I ain't convinced.

Hey, why should we believe what the Bush-Wah administration has to say – about these photos or anything else? After they threw an election, hijacked America, trumped up terror attacks so they could steal our rights, bamboozled us into a costly war we don't need, dragged the country down into debt, well, you get the, um, picture.

Rumsfeldstiltskin's banking on these photos convincing those hostile, skeptical Iraqis. But will they? And will the brain-dead masses of numbed-out, passive "Good Americans" believe them?

Meanwhile, we're brutal when it suits us.

To me, these photos seem as incredible to the eye as those doctored videos of some Arabian ringer from al-Qaida central casting the feds swore was a sleek, genial Bin Laden dining at a safe-house banquet.

After comparing alleged before-and-after photos of the Hussein brothers, I reject and repudiate this flimsy and insubstantial attempt at mass manipulation. Certainly I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect these photos are bogus. It's an insult to our intelligence expecting us to believe that, in death, these alleged corpses of the Hussein brothers sprouted scimitar noses where before they had upturned ones. And what's with their faces camouflaged by dark beards that look fake or painted on with shoe-polish?

Noted the relatively implacable Associated Press, not normally prone to speculation: "The brothers had never worn such thick beards, and may have been trying to disguise their identities as they spent three and a half months in hiding from coalition forces."

Reverse plastic surgery? I don't think so.

Silly me, but I'm reminded of my Grandmother Sarah dying when I was a little girl in New Jersey. Yes, she was really dead. However, although my mother and my two aunts – Aunt Dottie and Aunt Jean – each separately and hysterically insisted "That's not my mother" when they viewed the body, the funeral director gave them each a patronizing little pat, insisted of course it was Grandma Sarah's body, that they were merely overwrought.

Turns out that stupid Bronx funeral parlor had accidentally switched corpses and it really wasn't my grandmother. Just as our family insisted. Meanwhile, my grandmother's body, briefly buried into money, needed to be dug up, removed from the luxurious casket not her own modest one, placed in her rightful grave, and so my Mom and her two sisters wept all over again.

Be forewarned.