Heads Up

‘IN days of yore, the victors in battle would stick the heads of enemies on top of pikes and display them as a warning to all.

Spot ten diffences between the photo on the left and the one on the right to win a ‘Che Hussein’ T-shirt

Now the Americans use the wonders of photography to take a few shots to shock the world into inaction against their might.

On the front page of today’s Telegraph, readers get to see such propaganda in the dead eyes of Uday and Qusay Hussein, formerly sons of Saddam Hussein and examples of George Bush’s ‘evil folks’.

And these heads talk. If you press the button marked ‘Rumsfeld’, as the Telegraph does, a voiceover crackles into life.

‘I honestly believe these are particularly bad characters,’ says the US defence secretary, ‘and it’s important for the Iraqi people to see them, to know that they’re dead, and to know that they’re not coming back.

Countering the Rumsfeld line is the one picked up by the Guardian, which says that 80% of respondents to a poll conducted by an Iraqi newspaper think the pictures are a fabrication.

The land of Hollywood could produce such gruesome images, for sure. But the paper also says that today cameramen will be invited to get up close and personal with the cadavers and take pictures for themselves.

Robert Fisk, writing all over the cover of the Independent, says that Iraqis ‘will pore over the all-too-soon-to-be-iconic photographs of Uday and Qusay, and their reactions will be quite unlike what many of us expect’.

Move over, Che Guevara – there’s a new T-shirt on the way in Baghdad…

‘

Posted: 25th, July 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink