Sorcha, this is not casting aspersions on your brother; he's undoubtedly just passing on what he's been told. But I'm an old fart and I remember a lot of the stories that were going around about all the gratuitious horrors and atrocities the Japanese and the Germans were doing during World War II. People told them with almost pathological relish and glee, only to be further embellished by the next person to tell them. Later, most of these stories were established as untrue. It has an awfully familiar tone. This sort of thing comes under the heading of "unofficial propaganda," the whole point of which is to add fuel to the kind of hatred people who are hell-bent on going to war like to see stirred up. Granted, Saddam and his spawn are about the nastiest pieces of work one is about to find, but without a bit of verification, I'm kinda skeptical of stories like this.

Don Firth