Blogger Attaturk of Rising Hegemon is currently guestblogging at Atrios’ linked to a NYT piece and cited from it:
…a prosecutor at the trial that condemned Mr. Hussein to death, said that one of two men he had seen holding a cellphone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments — up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor — was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser.
But reading the NYT report now, that part has been changed to:
A prosecutor who attended the execution, Munkith al-Faroun, said he thought one of the invited witnesses had recorded the session on a cellphone, but he could not recall his name.
Spiiderweb and Josh Marshall have followed that story.
Al-Rubaie, Mr. Cellophan, is said to be a CIA asset. If he filmed Saddam’s hanging and leaked the video, one must see this as an act of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
The reason to do this can be found in the "Moqtada" chanting during the hanging. Moqtada al-Sadr is still the only force working on a allignment beween Sunni and Shia in Iraq. To have his name chanted during Saddam’s excecution and to publish such might have been seen as a reasonable strategy to break that forming alliance.
Meanwhile, suddenly Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki wants to urgently leave his job.
Will al-Rubaie now get his deserved promotion?