I don’t know if you have bothered to see the "video" footage of Saddam’s "hanging" (the leaded footage clearly isn’t the official footage, but rather, something shot from a cell phone), but it is disturbing.

It’s not the execution itself, nor the fact that Saddam was executed, that is distrubing.  It is the manner in which it is carried out.

In this country, when we execute someone — even the most despicable serial murderer — we do with dignity and solemnity.  Nobody dances; nobody shouts chants.  The prisoner is given a last meal; he is given spiritual advice.

In the video I saw, Saddam’s executioners appear like the Islamic equivalents of a mob lynching a black man.  They start chanting religious slogans with the names of Moqtada al Sadr (the head of the Mahdi army, accused of organizing death squads against Sunnis) and Baqr al Sadr (the father-in-law of Moqtada).  As Saddam says his final words (including a prayer to Muhammad), the impatient executor opens the trap door in mid-sentence, cutting off his words.  Cheers go up.

The most dignified man in the room is Saddam, and you can’t watch the video without thinking that this was not an execution that came about from due process of justice.  Instead, this appears as an act of revenge by Sunnis Shi-ites — a symbolic lynching in continual drama of sectarian violence.

Shameful.

Baghdad Burning (a blogger in Iraq) has more thoughts.

Just another data point in the continuing mess in Iraq, along with the fact that the U.S. death toll just passed 3,000, and December was the worst month in 2006.

RELATED:  Conventional wisdom says that the troops in Iraq support the war and Bush.  Conventional wisdom is wrong wrong wrong.  A massive poll of U.S. troops in Iraq was conducted by Military Times.  The results?

Barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, according to the new poll for the four papers (Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Times). In another startling finding, only 41% now feel it was the right idea to go to war in Iraq in the first place.

And the number who feel success there is likely has shrunk from 83% in 2004 to about 50% today. A surprising 13% say there should be no U.S. troops in Iraq at all.

This comes even though only about one in ten called their overall political views "liberal."