What should have been a solemn, considered act of justice for Saddam's many victims appeared to be a taunt filled, confused and brutal act of revenge. The bootleg cell phone video shows a man with considerable composure and strength of will meeting his death at the end of a rope. His Shia executioners and witnesses do not exhibit the same calm and dignified behavior. Instead they insult the former dictator on the gallows. The video is galvanizing Sunni resistance just as the brutality at Abu Ghraib did.
If al Maliki wanted to use the execution of Saddam Hussein as a unifying moment for Iraq, he failed. The Kurds do not understand why Saddam was not kept alive to hear the verdict against him for the more heinous war crime of nerve gas attacks against entire Kurdish villages in which some 5,000 Kurds died. Al Maliki was clearly in a hurry to execute the former dictator for the execution of 140 Shias caught in an attempt to assassinate Saddam. Perhaps he was acting under pressure from the Americans to do the deed while he still has sufficient control over the central government. By not allowing the second war crime trial to proceed with decorum to a verdict, Al Maliki looks vengeful and biased. Like almost everything the Bush regime has orchestrated in Iraq, they squandered the propaganda value of Saddam's execution. Instead of ending a tragic era, they created an Arab martyr.
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