Releasing the normally gruesome pictures of dead leaders is a powerful gesture. It has often been used in the past to mark the end of an era - From the BBC “‘in pictures’“
With millions of hits over the last few days, the leaked phone footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution has become one of the most-viewed video on the website. On the other hand, a great majority of national tv channels refused to broadcast the video - CNN “vowed discretion“, as the BBC implies that the phone camera footage may be “the most controversial media disclosure from Iraq since snapshots of US guards abusing prisoners inside Abu Ghraib”.
Some bloggers have rightly called out the hypocrisy shown by some mainstream media, who refuse to show the video when it is crystal clear that censorship is proved to be difficult to apply and enforce on the internet: it is very true, as this Comment is Free piece suggests, that our reaction and indignation to the execution would may not be the same, had we been confronted to the ‘official, edited and silent’ version only.
(Of course conspiracy theorists were all thrilled, displaying their interrogations [it wasn’t the real Saddam!] minutes after the news were released.)
Meanwhile, the Iraqi PM longs to leave office, as the conflict shows no sign of improvement and the body count keeps on escalating at an alarming rate.
Influential bloggers such as Andrew Sullivan are now calling for a withdrawal of the US troops:
The alternative is withdrawal. Many will call this a defeat. In many ways, it is. The attempt to remake the Middle East on our terms and on our own schedule has been revealed in retrospect as pure folly. The core goals of the Iraq war - to disarm Saddam and remove him from power - have been accomplished. Iraq is no longer a potential source of WMDs - just of suicide bombers and terrorists. Saddam is dead.
What strikes me as menacing is the possibility of an expansion of the already explosive civil war and increasing regional segmentation should the US decide to call its troops back. Stability will undoubtlessly be lost. A great deal of time will be needed for the conflict to slowly resolve itself, and in the meantime the country will be left to its disarray- and in an arguably worse shape than it was before the war began.
Damned if they do (withdraw), damned if they don't.
Update: An official in charge of supervising the execution has been arrested. He is believed to have recorded the hanging and remains unamned for the time being.
Elsewhere: Charles Peña asks: “Now that he has been executed the question that must be asked is: Since Saddam Hussein was the raison d’être for taking preemptive action against Iraq, was launching such a war worth it?” + Al Jazeera on the video and Iraqi divisions.
