Officials: Bush upset by Hussein hanging video

CNN ^ | January 10, 2007

[jmc1969]

President Bush was upset after watching the video of Saddam Hussein's execution, comparing it to how he felt after seeing the photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, White House officials said Wednesday.

Dark, grainy video -- apparently recorded on a cell phone -- of Hussein's December 30 hanging was leaked to the media soon after the execution.

In the video, taunts from Shiites can be heard moments before Hussein, a Sunni, is hanged.

After Hussein offers prayers, the guards shout praise for Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose father is believed to have been murdered by Hussein's regime.

They chant, "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!"

Hussein smiles. "Is this how you show your bravery as men?" he asks.

"Straight to hell," someone shouts back at him.

"Is this the bravery of Arabs?" Hussein asks.

[Diogenesis]

I am also upset. It should have been in high definition
with stereo, rather than a "dark, grainy video";
and Saddam should have been put feet-first through
a shredder slowly, operated by the families he hurt.

---

Dead children, previously playing in Halabja
Victims of Saddams' WMD in March 1988.

---

Also found in Iraq:

* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service
that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

* A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials
working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

* Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home,
one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

* New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF),
and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

* Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in
resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

* A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission
that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

* Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles,
a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists
have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

* Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -
well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed
Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology
related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles,
and other prohibited military equipment.

---

Still missing based on the UNSCOM report to the UN Security Council in January 1999,
when the UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they had been unable to account for:

• up to 360 tons of bulk chemical warfare agents, including 1.5 tons of VX nerve agent;

• up to 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals, including approximately 300 tons which,
in the Iraqi chemical warfare program, were unique to the production of VX;

• growth media procured for biological agent production (enough to produce
over three times the 8,500 litres of anthrax spores Iraq admitted to UN inspectors to having manufactured);

• over 30,000 special munitions for delivery of chemical and biological agents;

• 20 al-Hussein missles with a range of 650 km, in violation
of UN Security Council Resolution 687 (Iraq had told UNSCOM that it filled these warheads with anthrax and botulinum);

• 2,850 tons of mustard gas, 210 tons of tabun, and 795 tons of sarin and cyclosarin;

• development of the Al-Samoud short-range missle (which had the capability to fly beyond the 150 km allowed by UN resolutions)

[madison10]

Okay...I don't get it. Which part upset the President? The part where Hussein died? or the part where everyone is happy about the death?

[SolidWood]

I'd guess he was upset about the praise for Moqtada. That was really annoying and spoiled the fun.

[Michael81Dus]

From the article:

Bush found the taunting of Hussein as he stood on the gallows with a noose around his neck disturbing, the officials said.


You don´t bother to read the article first, do you?

[princess leah]

I think he was upset that the Geico interpreter wasn't available to translate what was happening!

[HAL9000]

Which part upset the President?

Probably the part that complicates the mission of our troops on the ground there.

[isthisnickcool]

Bush upset? What does that mean? What's he going to do? Something "stern" like watch movies in the White House with Ted Kennedy again?

He ought to get upset about the Democrats. They do and say things that get Americans killed.

One thing is for sure, Saddam isn't going to be slapping Bush in the face over and over like the Democrats have been for years. Maybe someday Bush will get "upset" enough to fight back? Nah...

[Lucky9teen]

Uh yeah...what you said!! Spot on. He should be laughing his ass off and giving high fives to everyone he sees, that Saddam has been killed. Abu Grabass? Torture? paleeze...

[Red Steel]

You'll notice no quotes are in the article. The info comes from the proverbial, unnamed White House official.

[antiRepublicrat]

Which part upset the President? The part where Hussein died? or the part where everyone is happy about the death?

Probably the part that upsets me. As a general over there said, we'd have done it right. The Iraqis screwed it up. The video shows an air of mob rule and a vindictive killing. His execution was cold justice under the law, and it should have been performed as such.

[SGCOS]

HFS, HE WAS TAUNTED.....PRAISE THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY HE WASN'T TORTURED WITH A WET NOODLE...

[vortigern]

Last night the National Geographic Channel aired a two-part series about Hitler and the Nazi's. They showed some very graphic footage of inmate bodies stacked like cord wood in the concentration camps. They later showed the hanging of Nazi's after the Nuremberg trials... their reward seemed somehow fitting. We need to gain some perspective, Bush included.

[HamiltonJay]

"Is this the bravery of Arabs?" Hussein asks.

Yes, yes it is, which is why that part of the world is a millenium behind the times... and will continue to be so.

[Cyclopean Squid]

If that is what we were waiting for, we and everyone else would have been better off with throwing him to a crowd of Shiites right after his capture.

[onedoug]

NEXT!

[dhs12345]

Me thinks they (the people in the region) doth protest too much.

The people in that region have been doing a lot worse for much less and for centuries.

Interesting that they suddenly turned civil while they support the bombing and butchery of women and children and their own people.

Sure, certainly there are people who won't like Saddam's hanging. However, as we have found, it is like trying to please the Dems, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.

So... do what is right and let things lay where they fall.

[Sir Gawain]

He was upset they weren't speaking Spanish.

[facedown]

You'll notice no quotes are in the article. The info comes from the proverbial, unnamed White House official.

Bingo. This "story" is just that, pure fiction.

[Chena]

President Bush is a good and honorable man. I'm not surprised at all that he would not approve of the taunting, etc.