Saddam execution video leads to arrests - 17 minutes ago

[helderheid]

By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago




BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi authorities reported the arrests Wednesday of two guards and an official who supervised
Saddam Hussein's hanging and said the guard force was infiltrated by outsiders who taunted the former leader and shot the video showing his body dangling at the end of a rope.


National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie and two other top officials variously reported one to three men were being questioned in the investigation into who heckled Saddam as he was minutes from death and took cell phone pictures of his execution.

"The investigation has already had an arrest warrant against one person and two to follow," al-Rubaie told CNN. He said the guard force at the execution was infiltrated by an Arab television station or another outsider.

The clandestine footage appeared on Al-Jazeera television and Web sites just hours after Saddam was hanged Saturday. The tumultuous scenes quickly overshadowed an official execution video, which was mute and showed none of the uproar among those on the floor of the chamber below the gallows.

The unauthorized video, which ignited protests by Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs in various Iraqi cities, threatens to turn the ousted dictator into a martyr. Saddam was shown never bowing his head as he faced death, and asking the hecklers if they were acting in a manly way.

A U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, said Saddam was dignified and courteous to his American jailers up to the moment he was handed over to the Iraqis outside the execution chamber. He said no Americans were present for the hanging.

MORE

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070103/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

[Demoiselle]

1. Oh swell.

First we have the sick-making spectacle of a man we made (armed him, encouraged him, etc.) handed over to his executioners because he was no longer useful to us..
Then we learn that he was jeered and generally humiliated at his death.
Now we learn that those who jeered and humiliated will be held up as martyred symbols as well.
This isn't civil war. It's chaos.
And we made it.

[helderheid]

2. There is a video CNN has with the translation of what was said

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/03/saddam.execution/index.html

Scroll down to:

Lost in translation

Al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, who was an official observer at the hanging,said the execution was "not a sectarian lynching" but that some of the behavior in the execution chamber was "unacceptable." (Watch as al-Rubaie describes what went on inside execution chamber Video)

[Disturbed]

4. When will the US Corp Media have the guts to show

the Video of Busholini mocking the failure to find the WMDs that were the Big Lie to Congress, the American people and the World?

[MidwestTransplant]

3. There was more than one taunter it sounded like to me

[helderheid]

6. Sounded like at least a half dozen.

[HeeBGBz]

5. That about sums it up.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

[malaise]

7. He's only being arrested for making the lynching public

If Bush and Maliki had been able to spin this like everything else, the taunters may have become the next government.