Lambert, a frequent commenter at Atrios, has a thoughtful post* in the comments regarding the deaths of the brothers Hussein. Apart from the obvious-- not wanting to make them martyrs-- he points out that if anyone knows where the (purported) WMDs might be hidden, surely they would have.
Additionally, Lambert says that had they been captured and turned over to the International Court at the Hague, this would have helped immensely in repairing the US's fractured relationship with the UN and several key European allies in particular.(Although he doesn't say this, I suspect, sadly enough, that our president probably doesn't care too much about the latter point, preferring to score points with the talk radio crowd over mending our relationship with the international community. And who knows, W may have preferred them dead because of his own doubts about the existence of WMDs, which they just as easily may have confirmed...)

(thanks to Cursor.)

*since this is a link to the comments section it may take a while to load.