The hanging of Saddam Hussein proceeded more like an act of sectarian vengeance than an orderly process of law, with guards chanting “Moktada! Moktada!”, heralding the name of the militia leader who backs the current Iraqi president — and whose forces the forthcoming U.S. “surge” will attempt to disband.
The only way we know this is because of the leak of a cameraphone recording of the clandestine event.
So what does the Iraqi government do? Arrest the guy accused of taking the pictures! (Who may well be a fall guy for the Iraqi national security adviser, anyway — see Josh Marshall’s parsing of the evidence.)
In this, the Baghdad government is simply taking cues from its American sponsor, the Bush administration — which has always treated the release of embarrassing information as an opportunity not to right the wrong but rather to shoot the messenger and crack down on leaks. As one correspondent over at Talking Points Memo argues, the Maliki government’s high-handed contempt for the legal process mirrors that of the American administration that brought it into being.
But I think the key to understanding this strange saga lies in how differently the video plays to different crowds. If you’re Prime Minister Maliki and your power-base and lifelong allegiance is to the Shiite side, you might figure that a record of the final humiliation of the oppressor Saddam would be a valuable bit of propaganda to show your people. You might not mind a little leak; you might even encourage your officials to record the proceedings. But the proceedings get a little more unruly and uglier than you expected — and suddenly the images that your in-country partisans savor are turning stomachs around the world (and driving the last remaining moderate Sunnis into the insurgent camp). So you disavow any responsibility and find some low-level scapegoat to blame.
A couple of days ago it was hard to imagine how the fallout from the botched Saddam Hussein execution could get any worse. But Maliki and his crew keep pushing the envelope.
[tags]saddam hussein, iraq, leaks[/tags]
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