Iraq to Review Abusive Acts at Hussein’s Execution

Talk about locking the stable door once the horse has bolted.

Iraq’s Shiite-led government said Tuesday that it had ordered an investigation into the abusive behavior at the execution of Saddam Hussein, who was subjected to a battery of taunts by official Shiite witnesses and guards as he awaited his hanging.

Officials said a three-man Interior Ministry committee would look into the scenes that have caused outrage and public demonstrations among Mr. Hussein’s Sunni Arab loyalists in Iraq, and widespread dismay elsewhere, especially in the Middle East.

It has taken three days for Maliki's government to stop crowing about the death as a positive thing and finally realise the size of PR disaster they are facing. They have managed the impossible by turning a vicious dictator into a martyr and now they seek to find some way to reverse that process.

It will not be possible as by now we have all seen the footage in which Saddam appears dignified facing death at the hands of a jeering mob. That this jeering mob represented the state was what most of us found so breathtaking. Maliki may now seek to scapegoat a few of them but the damage has been done. That state, even if it now regrets what took place - and they appear to do so only based on the worldwide condemnation of the act - nevertheless allowed the act to take place.

It is now being reported that the US was attempting until the last moment to have Maliki postpone the execution, although given the current American President I am taking that news with a very large pinch of salt.

As the shock of those scenes reached a new crescendo in Iraq, American officials said that they had worked until the last hours of Mr. Hussein’s life to persuade Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to delay the execution. The officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said they appealed to Mr. Maliki not to execute Mr. Hussein at dawn on Saturday because of the onset of a major Islamic festival, and because of constitutional and legal questions that the Americans believed threw the legitimacy of the execution into doubt.

But when Mr. Maliki decided to go ahead with the hanging, the Americans said they made no further attempts to stop it, having concluded that they could advise the Iraqis against the execution, but not prevent it if the Iraqis persisted, out of respect for Iraqi sovereignty.

When asked if that decision had been made in the White House, the Americans refused to say, noting only that it came some time before the final exchanges on Friday night. Mr. Hussein was hanged at 6:10 a.m. on Saturday, about seven hours after what the officials said was their final attempt to postpone the hanging.

“We told the prime minister that going forward on the first day of Id would have a negative reaction in the Islamic world, and among the Iraqi people,” a senior American official said, recounting a telephone conversation with Mr. Maliki that began at 10:30 p.m. Baghdad time on Friday. The reference was to the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Sunnis on Saturday, marking the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. “Therefore,” the official said, “we said we thought it would be better if they delayed until after Id, and use the delay to resolve the legal issues.”

This appears to me to be simply an attempt to distance the US from the outrage currently sweeping the Middle East and beyond. After all, when have the US shown such respect for Iraqi sovereignty before? They routinely call for the removal of Prime Ministers who they disapprove of, so where has this new found respect for Iraqi sovereignty come from?

Indeed, if they objected so much why did they hand Saddam over in the first place?

It would appear that Maliki, by ordering an investigation, and the Bush administration, by stating that they tried to prevent the execution taking place, are both trying to distance themselves from a public reaction that has genuinely taken them by surprise.

They imagined that, because Saddam was a dictator, he could be treated in any way they liked and that no-one would object. They rather imagined, I suspect, that their own prejudices were universal.

Now that they are finding out that this is not the case they are swirling around looking for others to blame. When it takes almost three days for someone to be shocked over something that shocked the rest of us instantly, I think we have the right to ask whether we are viewing genuine shock or political expediency.

I suspect the latter.

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tag: Saddam Hussein, execution, hanging, death penalty, Bush, Iraq, Iraq war