Duncan Sandys knew something big had happened Tuesday when Tom Brokaw bothered to answer his cell phone in front of 5,000 people at the dedication ceremonies outside the Dole Institute of Politics.

“I thought that was a bit peculiar,” said Sandys, who is Winston Churchill’s great-grandson. Sandys’ father’s mother was Churchill’s eldest daughter, Diana.

One by one, the whispering dignitaries learned that U.S. troops reportedly had killed Saddam Hussein’s sons Qusai and Odai in a firefight in Iraq.

“I thought it was great news,” Sandys said. “If it is correct, then it’s a major step forward.”

Sandys said that as long as Saddam and his sons’ deaths remained unconfirmed, peace in Iraq would be “quite difficult” amid fears that Saddam would somehow return to power.

Sandys (pronounced Sands) shared the podium Tuesday with Dole, Brokaw and former president Jimmy Carter at Tuesday’s dedication ceremonies. He spent part of Monday discussing his great-grandfather’s legacy in the “Memory Tent” outside the Dole Institute.

Sandys, 30, told the Journal-World he had “tremendous admiration” for the former senator and his struggle to overcome his war injuries.

He’s also a bit confused by the controversy over the absence of weapons of mass destruction and President Bush’s citing of British intelligence in his call for attacking Iraq.

It’s odd that Americans are criticizing Bush for going after Saddam, Sandys said, because “a regime change in Iraq” was part of Bush’s platform.

“He made his policy perfectly clear early on,” Sandys said.

Sandys said the same could not be said for Prime Minster Tony Blair.

When Blair “came into office, he said his top three priorities would be education, education and education,” Sandys said. “But here we are now — our education system is underfunded and not performing particularly well, our transport system is in chaos, our health service is not functioning properly, either. And our taxes have gone up.”

In retrospect, Blair would have generated less controversy, Sandys said, if he’d called for going after Saddam simply because Saddam was a murderous tyrant rather make “the 45-minute argument — the argument that a nuclear missile launched in Iraq could reach England in 45 minutes.”

Many in England, he said, feel “the full picture wasn’t necessarily given to them” and expect Blair to suffer politically.

“He’s very vulnerable,” said Sandys, who is a member of the Conservative Party and a city counselor in Westminster. Blair is a member of the Labor Party.