posted January 03, 2007 01:29 AM            

quote:

---

For anyone who disrespects his fellow man in any way is guilty of lack of love which is the root of all crimes against humanity.

---

posted January 03, 2007 01:51 AM              

All I know is two wrongs, don't make a right...
and how can we ever justify the death penalty?

to determine one's time of death, wow, Man
must be really something to do that? Not!

rehablitate and heal
inprisoned with the consequences
of one's actions. ...

or perhapes exiled to an island
I like that One, hehe

but no Death Penalty...

posted January 03, 2007 01:56 AM            

quote:

---

All I know is two wrongs, don't make a right...
and how can we ever justify the death penalty?

---

posted January 03, 2007 02:05 AM              

It was very easy for us to hand him over.

You're right Lotus. 2 wrongs don't make a right.

Now I hope you see why I hate my own government so much.

I sense their evil.

They think they are the world police.

posted January 03, 2007 02:25 AM              

5:24 PM - The Saddam Hussein Execution Video-Invitation to a Hanging By PETER ROST, MD (video; over 18)
Category: News and Politics

January 2, 2007
Invitation to a Hanging
The Saddam Hussein Execution Video

By PETER ROST, MD

Self-censoring in regular news media resulted in readers flocking to the internet to find a complete video of Saddam Hussein's execution. Here is the uncensored video, taken with a camera phone by one of the witnesses to Mr. Hussein's hanging.

The video showed an undignified spectacle, with Mr. Hussein appearing more composed than his killers. I have no tears for Mr. Hussein; yet, I also have no respect for his executioners, who made the state-orchestrated execution appear like an assassination by thugs. And of course, our domestic television news just couldn't bring themselves to show the end result of thousands of sacrificed American soldiers-one dictator falling to his death, his head twisted horribly to the side as he was swinging at the end of the rope.

Out of thousands of visitors viewing the video on my site, those visitors included CBS News, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security. After all, they couldn't view what happened through any official channel. I guess 2006 will be remembered as the year when the blog world truly took over as the most important source for useful, uncensored reporting.

I don't have any respect for a justice system which uses the death penalty. Killing is always barbaric, whether it takes place in Iraq or in the U.S. As for the Iraqi justice system, the puppets currently leading the country apparently made a late-night end run around the legal protections any prisoner is entitled to before his death, in order to quickly assassinate Mr. Hussein. This process speaks for itself.

The fact that the Americans held Mr. Hussein in captivity and turned him over after having been assured of the "legality," of the decision, doesn't make the spectacle any more palatable.

In the end, Mr. Bush caught and killed his father's archenemy, under the thinly veiled guise of "justice." Just as clearly Mr. Hussein, who has been the miniature Stalin of our time, deserved his fate. But, the whole affair leaves a bitter aftertaste.

The killing of Mr. Hussein doesn't confirm that there is any justice. It simply confirms that whoever is in possession of raw power can do whatever he wants.

Welcome to 2007.

posted January 03, 2007 02:36 AM              

Sheesh what denial can do to some idiots.

Updated:2006-12-30 00:53:30
Iraqi Government Executes Former Dictator
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Dec. 30) - Saddam Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, was taken to the gallows and executed Saturday. On the gallows, Saddam refused to wear a hood and shouted: "God is great."

Watch Video:
News Video Saddam Hussein Is Dead
News Video Ex-Dictator's Goodbye
News Video Former Dictator's Legacy
News Video Hussein's Fall From Power
News Video Dujail Revisited

Talk About It: Post Thoughts

More Coverage:
· Five U.S. Troops Killed
· Bush Reacts to Execution

Obituary: A Life of Violence
It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

President Bush called Saddam's execution "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime."

Baghdad was relatively quiet after the announcement, and the government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did when Saddam was convicted on Nov. 5 to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence. In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, some people danced and fired guns in the air to celebrate the former dictator's death.

State-run Iraqiya television news reported that Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, also were hanged. However, three officials said only Saddam was executed.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run Iraqiyah.

Al-Rubaie said Saddam "totally surrendered" and did not resist. He said a judge read the sentence to Saddam, who was taken in handcuffs to the execution room. When he stood in the execution room, photographs and video footage were taken, al-Rubaie said.

"He did not ask for anything. He was carrying a Quran and said: 'I want this Quran to be given to this person,' a man he called Bander," he said. Al-Rubaie said he did not know who Bander was.

"Saddam was treated with respect when he was alive and after his death," al-Rubaie said. "Saddam's execution was 100 percent Iraqi and the American side did not interfere."

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Saddam struggled when he was taken from his cell in an American military prison, but was composed in his last moments. He said Saddam was clad completely in black, with a jacket, trousers, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb.

Shortly before the execution, Saddam's hat was removed and Saddam was asked if he wanted to say something, al-Askari said.

"No I don't want to," al-Askari quoted Saddam as saying. Saddam did repeate a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.

"Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a bag," al-Askari said.

Saddam's Life
"Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab," al-Askari said.

He said the government had not decided what to do with Saddam's body.

Mariam al-Rayes, a legal expert and a former member of the Shiite bloc in parliament, told Iraqiya television that the execution "was filmed and God willing it will be shown. There was one camera present, and a doctor was also present there."

Al-Rayes, an ally of al-Maliki, did not attend the execution. She said Al-Maliki did not attend but was represented by an aide.

The station earlier was airing national songs after the first announcement and had a tag on the screen that read "Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."

The execution was carried out around the start of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic world's largest holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. Many Muslims celebrate by sacrificing domestic animals, usually sheep.

Sunnis and Shiites throughout the world began observing the four-day holiday at dawn Saturday, but Iraq's Shiite community - the country's majority - was due to start celebrating on Sunday.

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill the dictator in 1982. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge, Al-Maliki, on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

Al-Maliki had rejected calls that Saddam be spared, telling families of people killed during the dictator's rule that would be an insult to the victims.

"Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence," al-Maliki's office quoted him as saying during a meeting with relatives before the hanging.

Human Rights Watch criticized the execution, calling Saddam's trial "deeply flawed."

"Saddam Hussein was responsible for massive human rights violations, but that can't justify giving him the death penalty, which is a cruel and inhuman punishment," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program.

The hanging of Saddam, who was ruthless in ordering executions of his opponents, will keep other Iraqis from pursuing justice against the ousted leader.

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds.

Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

"Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass graves. Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam," said Sheik Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

On Thursday, two half brothers visited Saddam in his cell, a member of the former dictator's defense team, Badee Izzat Aref, told The Associated Press by telephone from the United Arab Emirates. He said the former dictator handed them his personal belongings.

A senior official at the Iraqi defense ministry said Saddam gave his will to one of his half brothers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.

The message called on Iraqis to put aside the sectarian hatred that has bloodied their nation for a year and voiced support for the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency against U.S.-led forces, saying: "Long live jihad and the mujahedeen."

Saddam urged Iraqis to rely on God's help in fighting "against the unjust nations" that ousted his regime.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.

During that war, as part of the wider campaign against Kurds, the Iraqi military used chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.

The economic troubles from the Iran war led Saddam to invade Kuwait in the summer of 1990, seeking to grab its oil wealth, but a U.S.-led coalition inflicted a stinging defeat on the Iraq army and freed the Kuwaitis.

U.N. sanctions imposed over the Kuwait invasion remained in place when Saddam failed to cooperate fully in international efforts to ensure his programs for creating weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled. Iraqis, once among the region's most prosperous, were impoverished.

The final blow came when U.S.-led troops invaded in March 2003. Saddam's regime fell quickly, but political, sectarian and criminal violence have created chaos that has undermined efforts to rebuild Iraq's ruined economy.

While he wielded a heavy hand to maintain control, Saddam also sought to win public support with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports and shops and on Iraq's currency.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2006-12-29 14:09:37
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An Iraqi American judge now get it through your damn head.

posted January 03, 2007 02:43 AM              

Men prayed before Saddam Hussein's grave at his funeral, which was held under heavy security in his home village, Awja, near Tikrit, on Sunday. More Photos >

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By JOHN F. BURNS and MARC SANTORA
Published: January 1, 2007

BAGHDAD, Dec. 31 — With his plain pine coffin strapped into an American military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.
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Readers shared their thoughts on the execution of Saddam Hussein.

* Comment Read Comments (2,035)

The Reach of War
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Like the helicopter trip, just about everything in the 24 hours that began with Mr. Hussein’s being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality.

Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of Iraq’s new Shiite rulers who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Mr. Hussein.

The 110-mile journey aboard a Black Hawk helicopter carried Mr. Hussein’s body to an American military base north of Tikrit, Camp Speicher, named for an American Navy pilot lost over Iraq in the first hours of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. From there, an Iraqi convoy carried him to Awja, the humble town beside the Tigris River that Mr. Hussein, in the chandeliered palaces that became his habitat as ruler, spoke of as emblematic of the miseries of his lonely and impoverished youth.

The American role extended beyond providing the helicopter that carried Mr. Hussein home. Iraqi and American officials who have discussed the intrigue and confusion that preceded the decision late on Friday to rush Mr. Hussein to the gallows have said that it was the Americans who questioned the political wisdom — and justice — of expediting the execution, in ways that required Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to override constitutional and religious precepts that might have assured Mr. Hussein a more dignified passage to his end.

The Americans’ concerns seem certain to have been heightened by what happened at the hanging, as evidenced in video recordings made just before Mr. Hussein fell through the gallows trapdoor at 6:10 a.m. on Saturday. A new video that appeared on the Internet late Saturday, apparently made by a witness with a camera cellphone, underscored the unruly, mocking atmosphere in the execution chamber.

This continued, on the video, through the actual hanging itself, with a shout of “The tyrant has fallen! May God curse him!” as Mr. Hussein hung lifeless, his neck snapped back and his glassy eyes open.

The cacophony from those gathered before the gallows included a shout of “Go to hell!” as the former ruler stood with the noose around his neck in the final moments, and his riposte, barely audible above the bedlam, which included the words “gallows of shame.” It continued despite appeals from an official-sounding voice, possibly Munir Haddad, the judge who presided at the hanging, saying, “Please no! The man is about to die.”

The Shiites who predominated at the hanging began a refrain at one point of “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!”— the name of a volatile cleric whose private militia has spawned death squads that have made an indiscriminate industry of killing Sunnis — appending it to a Muslim imprecation for blessings on the Prophet Muhammad. “Moktada,” Mr. Hussein replied, smiling contemptuously. “Is this how real men behave?”

American officials in Iraq have been reluctant to say much publicly about the pell-mell nature of the hanging, apparently fearful of provoking recriminations in Washington, where the Bush administration adopted a hands-off posture, saying the timing of the execution was Iraq’s to decide.

While privately incensed at the dead-of-night rush to the gallows, the Americans here have been caught in the double bind that has ensnared them over much else about the Maliki government — frustrated at what they call the government’s failure to recognize its destructive behavior, but reluctant to speak out, or sometimes to act, for fear of undermining Mr. Maliki and worsening the situation.

But a narrative assembled from accounts by various American officials, and by Iraqis present at some of the crucial meetings between the two sides, shows that it was the Americans who counseled caution in the way the Iraqis carried out the hanging. The issues uppermost in the Americans’ minds, these officials said, were a provision in Iraq’s new Constitution that required the three-man presidency council to approve hangings, and a stipulation in a longstanding Iraqi law that no executions can be carried out during the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday and Shiites on Sunday.

A senior Iraqi official said the Americans staked out their ground at a meeting on Thursday, 48 hours after an appeals court had upheld the death sentence passed on Mr. Hussein and two associates. They were convicted in November of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Shiite townspeople of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982. Mr. Hussein, as president, signed a decree to hang 148 men and teenage boys.

(Page 2 of 2)

Told that Mr. Maliki wanted to carry out the death sentence on Mr. Hussein almost immediately, and not wait further into the 30-day deadline set by the appeals court, American officers at the Thursday meeting said that they would accept any decision but needed assurance that due process had been followed before relinquishing physical custody of Mr. Hussein.
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Readers shared their thoughts on the execution of Saddam Hussein.

* Comment Read Comments (2,035)

The Reach of War
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“The Americans said that we have no issue in handing him over, but we need everything to be in accordance with the law,” the Iraqi official said. “We do not want to break the law.”

The American pressure sent Mr. Maliki and his aides into a frantic quest for legal workarounds, the Iraqi official said. The Americans told them they needed a decree from President Jalal Talabani, signed jointly by his two vice presidents, upholding the death sentence, and a letter from the chief judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that tried Mr. Hussein, certifying the verdict. But Mr. Talabani, a Kurd, made it known that he objected to the death penalty on principle.

The Maliki government spent much of Friday working on legal mechanisms to meet the American demands. From Mr. Talabani, they obtained a letter saying that while he would not sign a decree approving the hanging, he had no objections. The Iraqi official said Mr. Talabani first asked the tribunal’s judges for an opinion on whether the constitutional requirement for presidential approval applied to a death sentence handed down by the tribunal, a special court operating outside Iraq’s main judicial system. The judges said the requirement was void.

Mr. Maliki had one major obstacle: the Hussein-era law proscribing executions during the Id holiday. This remained unresolved until late Friday, the Iraqi official said. He said he attended a late-night dinner at the prime minister’s office at which American officers and Mr. Maliki’s officials debated the issue.

One participant described the meeting this way: “The Iraqis seemed quite frustrated, saying, ‘Who is going to execute him, anyway, you or us?’ The Americans replied by saying that obviously, it was the Iraqis who would carry out the hanging. So the Iraqis said, ‘This is our problem and we will handle the consequences. If there is any damage done, it is we who will be damaged, not you.’ ”

To this, the Iraqis added what has often been their trump card in tricky political situations: they telephoned officials of the marjaiya, the supreme religious body in Iraqi Shiism, composed of ayatollahs in the holy city of Najaf. The ayatollahs approved. Mr. Maliki, at a few minutes before midnight on Friday, then signed a letter to the justice minister, “to carry out the hanging until death.”

The Maliki letter sent Iraqi and American officials into a frenzy of activity. Fourteen Iraqi officials, including senior members of the Maliki government, were called at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday and told to gather at the prime minister’s office. At. 3:30 a.m., they were driven to the helicopter pad beside Mr. Hussein’s old Republican Palace, and taken to the prison in the northern suburb of Khadimiya where the hanging took place.

At about the same time, American and Iraqi officials said, Mr. Hussein was roused at his Camp Cropper cell 10 miles away, and taken to a Black Hawk helicopter for his journey to Khadimiya.

None of the Iraqi officials were able to explain why Mr. Maliki had been unwilling to allow the execution to wait. Nor would any explain why those who conducted it had allowed it to deteriorate into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs.

But the explanation may have lain in something that Bassam al-Husseini, a Maliki aide closely involved in arrangements for the hanging, said to the BBC later. Mr. Husseini, [b]who has American citizenship, described the hanging as “an Id gift to the Iraqi people.”

The weekend’s final disorderly chapter came with the tensions over Mr. Hussein’s body. For nearly 18 hours on Saturday, Mr. Maliki’s officials insisted that his corpse would be kept in secret government custody until circumstances allowed interment without his grave becoming a shrine or a target. Once again, the Americans intervened.

The leader of Mr. Hussein’s Albu-Nasir tribe, Sheik Ali al-Nida, said that before flying to Baghdad on an American helicopter, he had been so fearful for his safety that he had written a will. Bizarrely, Sheik Nida and others were shown on Iraqi television collecting the coffin from the courtyard in front of Mr. Maliki’s office, where it sat unceremoniously in a police pickup.

After the helicopter trip to Camp Speicher, the American base outside Tikrit, the coffin was taken in an Iraqi convoy to Awja, and laid to rest in the ornate visitors’ center that Mr. Hussein ordered built for the townspeople in the 1990s. Local officials and members of Mr. Hussein’s tribe had broken open the marbled floor in the main reception hall, and cleared what they said would be a temporary burial place until he could be moved to a permanent grave outside Awja where his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are buried.

At the burial, several mourners threw themselves on the closed casket. One, a young man convulsed with sobs, cried: “He has not died. I can hear him speaking to me.” Another shouted, “Saddam is dead! Instead of weeping for him, think of ways we can take revenge on the Iranian enemy,” Sunni parlance for the Shiites now in power.

posted January 03, 2007 02:56 AM            

quote:

---

President Bush called Saddam's execution "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.

---

posted January 03, 2007 07:59 AM            

quote:

---

IMHO if we are going to be in the business of hanging people for crimes against humanity it's possible that we might all be judged worthy of hanging. For anyone who disrespects his fellow man in any way is guilty of lack of love which is the root of all crimes against humanity.

---

posted January 03, 2007 05:19 PM            

quote:

---

And the guards were unprofessional and direspectful about it

---

posted January 03, 2007 05:28 PM              

quote:

---

Yea Ill agree it was very disrespectful how he was treated and the way it was carried out. LIke i said before im against hanging people altogether.

---

Oh please. All you have done is cheer on his death this whole time and even said the U.S has the right to bring him into power and take it away as if hanging someone is something funny.

Stop being so fake, changing your opinions to please whoever is posting.

You stupid little girl you don't even know what you believe.

posted January 03, 2007 05:45 PM            

But trials take time, sometimes lots of time to develop evidence, witnesses and just the presentation of the evidence and witnesses in a court of law can take many months or even years. Witness Slobodan Milosevic and that farce of a trial in a UN Court.

posted January 03, 2007 05:55 PM            

quote:

---

Witness Slobodan Milosevic and that farce of a trial in a UN Court.

---

Doth my ears decieve me??? What a farce of a trial? He was convicted and executed, wasn't he????

quote:

---

YES I was thoroughly ****** about that! Its like ur gonna kill him at least give him his dignity!

---

posted January 03, 2007 06:16 PM            

quote:

---

Oh please. All you have done is cheer on his death this whole time and even said the U.S has the right to bring him into power and take it away as if hanging someone is something funny.

---

Gosh darn it is as hilarious as your empty arguments...yes on the day of his death i popped a bottle of champagne and had a party...oh wait thats cuz it was New Year's..there goes your theory...Clearly everyone here who bothers to have a conversation with me is well aware of my positions, i dont give a flying monkey what you think. Buh bye

quote:

---

Stop being so fake, changing your opinions to please whoever is posting.

---

LOLOLOLOL no one other than you has noted my changing opinions...could it be because...i was consistant...haha...yea...you just cant keep up...where is your Gemini sun now?

quote:

---

You stupid little girl you don't even know what you believe.

---

Im sure youll be kind enough to tell me and everyone else on this forum what they believe...

Dear Dulce - No Milosevic wasnt executed Dulce, he was actually murdered in jail. Not by the governments but someone took him out. So no ICC doesnt execute people, actually.

quote:

---

I know, its like they handed him over to a bunch of thugs...not professionals. And while were at it, why pick the holy day? F-ing ridiculous.

---

posted January 03, 2007 06:20 PM            

quote:

---

Dear Dulce - No Milosevic wasnt executed Dulce, he was actually murdered in jail. Not by the governments but someone took him out.

---

Oh, woops! Thanx for the correction

posted January 03, 2007 10:09 PM              

Jan 3, 9:31 PM EST

Saddam Execution Video Leads to Arrests

By STEVEN R. HURST
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi authorities reported the arrests Wednesday of two guards and an official who supervised Saddam Hussein's hanging and said the guard force was infiltrated by outsiders who taunted the former leader and shot the video showing his body dangling at the end of a rope.

The unauthorized video, which ignited protests by Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs in various Iraqi cities, threatens to turn the ousted dictator into a martyr. Saddam was shown never bowing his head as he faced death, and asking the hecklers if they were acting in a manly way.

The Bush administration sent conflicting signals Wednesday about the taunting and baiting that accompanied the execution, with the White House declining to join criticism of the procedure and the State Department and U.S. military publicly raising questions about it.

Saddam, who was convicted for the killings of 148 Shiites, was dignified and courteous to his American jailers up to the moment he was handed over to the Iraqis outside the execution chamber, a U.S. military spokesman said.

He "was courteous, as he always had been, to his U.S. military police guards," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell said. "He spoke very well to our military police, as he always had. And when getting off there at the prison site, he said farewell to his interpreter. He thanked the military police squad, the lieutenant, the squad leader, the medical doctor we had present, and the colonel that was on site."

Although Saddam "was still dignified toward us," Caldwell said his demeanor changed "at the prison facility when the Iraqi guards were assuming control of him."

National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie and two other top officials variously reported one to three men were being questioned in the investigation into who heckled Saddam as he was minutes from death and took cell phone pictures of his execution.

"The investigation has already had an arrest warrant against one person and two to follow," al-Rubaie told CNN. He said the guard force at the execution was infiltrated by an Arab television station or another outsider.

The clandestine footage appeared on Al-Jazeera television and Web sites just hours after Saddam was hanged Saturday. The tumultuous scenes quickly overshadowed an official execution video, which was mute and showed none of the uproar among those on the floor of the chamber below the gallows.

Sami al-Askeri, a Shiite lawmaker who advises Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said two "Justice Ministry guards were being questioned. The investigation committee is interrogating the men. If it is found that any official was involved, he will face legal measures."

A second key al-Maliki adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said, "In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who videotaped Saddam's execution. He was an official who supervised the execution and now he is under investigation."

Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, one of 14 official witnesses to the execution, told The Associated Press that he saw two government officials using camera phones at the hanging.

"I saw two of the government officials who were ... present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution," he said. "They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces."

Caldwell said no Americans were present for the hanging and that the tumultuous execution would have gone differently had the Americans been in charge.

As the storm over the handling of the hanging gained strength, Caldwell was among several U.S. officials who suggested displeasure with the conduct of the execution.

"If you are asking me: 'Would we have done things differently?' Yes, we would have. But that's not our decision. That's the government of Iraq's decision," the general said.

The White House declined to join in the criticism.

"The president is focused on the new way forward in Iraq so these issues are best addressed out of Iraq, out of Baghdad," deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said. "Prime Minister Maliki's staff have already expressed their disappointment in the filmings, so I guess we'll leave it at that."

Stanzel said the U.S. military and the U.S. Embassy in Iraq had expressed concerns about the timing of the execution and about "the process and what took place."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. officials had questioned holding the execution on a Muslim festival day, the opening of Eid al-Adha, and as well as some procedures.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and his diplomatic team "did engage the government of Iraq on issues relating to procedures involved in the timing of the execution (of Saddam), given the upcoming holy days. While the government of Iraq gave consideration to U.S. concerns, all decisions made regarding the execution were Iraqi decisions based on their own considerations."

Wednesday's remarks by U.S. officials were the first public confirmation of reports that the Americans had questioned the timing of the hanging.

The second-guessing over the conduct of the execution came as Iraqi and Arab media and an Iraqi government official said preparations were under way to hang two of Saddam's co-defendants in the next few days but that the details still have to be worked out with the American military.

A Cabinet official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the information, said the two men would hang "at the beginning of next week."

Caldwell said those executions, like Saddam's, were the responsibility of the Iraqi government. "It's a sovereign nation. It's their system. They make those decisions."

Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim, a former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were originally scheduled to hang with Saddam. But their execution was delayed until after Eid al-Adha, which ended Wednesday for Iraq's majority Shiites.

Al-Arabiya satellite television and Al-Furat TV, run by Iraq's major Shiite Muslim political organization, both reported that Ibrahim and al-Bandar would go to the gallows on Thursday. However, Mariam al-Rays, an al-Maliki adviser, called such reports "baseless."

In Washington, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts denied a request by a lawyer for Bandar to block the U.S. military from transferring custody of the condemned man to Iraqi authorities.

U.N. human rights chief Louise Arbour, backed by new Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, appealed to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to prevent the execution of Ibrahim and al-Bandar, saying she was concerned with "the fairness and impartiality" of their trials.