Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's sons, Qusay and Uday, were killed Tuesday in a gunbattle with U.S. troops in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq said.

Their bodies were identified from "multiple sources," Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told reporters in Baghdad.

"They died in a fierce gunbattle," Sanchez said. "They resisted detention and the effort of coalition forces to apprehend them."

UPDATE: And, of course, the usual suspects are reacting to this news with every conceivable emotion except for happiness: they're accusing the US of having had the bodies in freezers for weeks, to trot out in order to push "yellowcake" off the headlines; they're lamenting our cold-blooded assassination of two men who should only have been arrested at worst; they're even latching onto the word "sons" as though it implies that Uday and Qusay were innocent kids. And it's not just these slimy little web worm-dungeons either-- the BBC is even putting scare quotes around the word "dead" and what we callously refer to as "good" news.

That's it. I am through with trying to make sense of how people like this can consider themselves moral and rational and informed human beings.

If I were a praying man, I'd pray that they were fewer than they appear.