Was Saddam's Hanging a Death Squad Lynching?

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Iraqi government officials are falling all over themselves trying to explain why the execution of Saddam Hussein was so miserably botched.

Immediately after Hussein was hanged, a senior Iraqi administration official who had been present claimed it all went without a hitch - unless, of course, your first name rhymed with "Madam". He assured the world that the execution had been conducted with the utmost solemnity and respect for the condemned. As we now know, this guy was lying through his teeth. Saddam, and through him many Sunni Iraqis, was taunted, mocked and humiliated before and after he dropped through the gallows floor.

Within hours, gruesome, cellphone camera video was circulating on the internet showing the grisly event and the lynch mob spectacle that attended it.

The Maliki government was caught completely unprepared. They obviously knew how the events had unfolded but they plainly didn't expect video of it to leak out. In the days that followed, their stated concerns related almost exclusively to the unauthorized video with hardly a word of rebuke for what had gone bad with the execution itself.

Lies and coverups like these unravel gradually but unravel they do. First they blamed a rogue guard, actually arrested one who they blamed for making the cellphone video. They tried to blame the whole thing on the guards. However the audio track recorded the voice of one of the prosecutors yelling at the mob to stop taunting Saddam. This prosecutor subsequently said he saw two "officials", one of them senior, using their cellphone cameras. Not guards, officials. Of course, no officials have been arrested.

Today we get another account. Now, according to Reuters, they claim the whole execution was hijacked by a militia lynch mob:

"'Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shi'ites and Sunnis,' said National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, one of a group of 20 officials and other witnesses who were present at the execution at dawn on Saturday.
'There was an infiltration at the execution chamber.'

"Echoing those accusations, a senior Interior Ministry official said the hanging was supposed to be carried out by hangmen employed by the Interior Ministry but that "militias" had managed to infiltrate the executioners' team.

"'The execution was carried out by militias and outsiders. They put aside the team from the Interior Ministry that was supposed to carry it out,' the official said. "

So, let's get this straight. It has been reported that US troops secured the execution site. They supposedly searched the witnesses and execution officials on their way into the gallows chamber. Despite the prohibition on cellphones a number were carried in, right past American military security.

Then, at some point well prior to the execution, minutes earlier at the very least, a gaggle of thugs got past security and "put aside" the Interior Ministry team and - no one noticed? They marched right in, took their sweet time hanging the guy and no one, including the Interior Ministry officials, said a thing? Yeah, sure.

Obviously the Maliki government is panicking to the point where it is conjuring up irrational, ludicrous explanations and excuses. They've had days to come up with something believable, even remotely plausible, and yet they toss out tall tales that are contradicted by the very same video that started their problems. Earth to Maliki - if you're going to play this game, make sure your fabrications at least loosely fit the recording everyone has seen and heard.

It was hoped that the execution of Saddam Hussein would restore credibility to the wobbly Maliki government. What they got out of it instead was a body blow to their legitimacy that will destabilize even further Sunni-Shia tensions inside and beyond Iraq itself.