Acting on a tip from an Iraqi that Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, were holed up in a palatial residence in the northern city of Mosul, United States troops surrounded the house today and killed the two men in a ferocious shootout that gradually shredded the walls providing them cover.

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division as well as Special Operations forces called on the men to surrender and were answered with a peppering of small-arms fire, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, chief of land forces in Iraq, said at a late-night news conference.
"They died in a fierce gun battle," he said. "They resisted the detention and the efforts of the coalition forces to go in there and apprehend them, and they were killed in the ensuing gunfight and the attacks that we conducted on the residence."

Couldn't have happened to two nicer guys. Lest we forget, here's the style to which these young men were accustomed:

The more flamboyant Uday, 39, was an infamous playboy feared for his sadistic, murderous bent, who organized the Saddam Fedayeen, giving pardoned criminals a new lease on life if they would kill for the government. They were the main guerrilla force that battled the advancing American Army.

Uday became increasingly unstable in public after beating to death his father's favorite servant in 1988, and was gradually discounted as a successor. He had a high public profile, though, as a member of Parliament, head of the most popular newspaper and television station plus chairman of the national Olympic Committee, whose basement was used a center of torture and rape. In a referendum on his father's rule last fall, Uday drove to the polling place in a pink Rolls Royce.

These guys were a serious waste of oxygen.