Bush: Saddam Hanging Was ‘Fumbled’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — President Bush said yesterday the chaotic execution of Saddam Hussein looked like “kind of a revenge killing” and showed that the government of Prime Minister al-Maliki “has still got some maturation to do.”
In his toughest assessment yet, Mr. Bush criticized the circumstances of Saddam’s hanging and the execution of two top aides, including Saddam’s half brother.
“I was disappointed and felt like they fumbled the — particularly the Saddam Hussein execution,” the president said in an interview PBS’s Jim Lehrer.
A cell-phone video of the December 30 hanging of Saddam showed the deposed Iraqi leader being taunted as he stood on the gallows with a noose around his neck. An official video of the execution of Saddam’s half brother showed that the hangman’s noose decapitated him. Mr. Bush said he had expressed disappointment to Mr. Maliki about the way Saddam’s execution was handled.
“The message is that it’s a confusing message,” the president said. “It basically says to people, ‘Look, you conducted a trial and gave Saddam justice that he didn’t give to others. But then, when it came to execute him, it looked like it was kind of a revenge killing.’ And it sent a mixed signal to the American people and the people around the world.”
“And it just goes to show that this is a government that has still got some maturation to do,” Mr. Bush said in the interview, to be telecast yesterday evening on PBS’s “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.”
Polls show that Americans are overwhelmingly unhappy with Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy. Seventy percent oppose sending more troops to Iraq, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll last week.
Meanwhile, according to the Daily Telegraph, the United Nations said yesterday that almost 35,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in sectarian violence last year.
It accused the Iraqi government — which reports far fewer deaths — of failing to tackle the causes of the bloodshed or punish the killers.
The U.N. figures, which are much higher than the government’s official count, came on one of the bloodiest days this month as several bombs killed more than 70 people, most of them at a university in eastern Baghdad.
The U.N. report said 34,452 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded in 2006. Iraqi government figures vary between 12,357 and 23,000.
