Bush handed Saddam to sectarian lynch mob [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 4:19 PM on January 1, 2007.

The video to the right is a censored version of the Saddam execution you can find just about anywhere on the web right now. If you must see the actual execution, go HERE.

I post it so you can hear for yourself its most important aspect. Toward the end of the clip, you can make out deafening shouts of "Muqtada," indicating to the entire Muslim world and beyond that Saddam was essentially handed over to a Shi'ite militia to kill their enemy, a Sunni.

The Bush admin has spent years telling everyone who would listen that the Unity government of Iraq (Sunni and Shi'ite) would thrive, that Democracy would flourish, that -- as Josh details exhaustively -- success lay just around the bend.

Josh Marshall, asking whether we'll look back on this as "a signal of American power or weakness," notes that this sham is an American job from start till... juuuuust before the finish, when we handed Saddam over to Iraqi Shi'ites to do the killing. And this, after the trial for relatively small crimes, with a sentencing date ever so suspiciously timed to U.S. elections...

So now, apart from the fading hope for some actual justice for the victims of Saddam's war crimes (in the form of some investigation and revelation of facts), the Bush Administration's bungling ways continue by fanning the flames of the Iraqi Civil War, endangering everyone in the region, our soldiers included.

One Arab diplomat put it this way: "This footage is going to antagonize Sunnis throughout the Middle East... It's one thing for Sunnis to read about al-Sadr's followers gloating. It's far more upsetting to watch and hear them do it."

Asked by Tim Russert "What impact do you believe his execution will have short term, long term on the security situation in Iraq?," NBC correspondent Richard Engel grimly replied: "Frankly, tim, I don’t think that it will have a tremendous impact...The fact that this video and the execution itself were tinged by such sectarian overtones, that could fuel the much more greater problem in this country which is the civil war."

Tagged as: bush, iraq, saddam

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.