Saddam's Hanging a U.S. Trap to Divide the Nation

Amid a harsh sectarian divide, the Americans have extricated themselves from the fallout of former leader Saddam Hussein's hanging, leaving the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and its Shiite backers to face their fates alone.

Sine they had him in custody, the Americans could have delayed Saddam's hanging. Instead, they delivered Saddam Hussein to the government knowing that he would be sentenced to death and would be executed. The Americans took the decision to hand Saddam over to Iraqi authorities for execution and attached no conditions to the handover.

But when pictures of the hanging appeared on the Internet and were broadcast widely by the international media and drew condemnation from around the world, the United States immediately began to use the event to deepen the sectarian divide among the Iraqi people.

The way the U.S. has used the execution is a reminder of the host of lies and fabrications it told to justify the invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraq. I too condemned the way the hanging took place because it was merely a ritualistic act of barbaric revenge which showed that the al-Maliki government is nothing but a radical religious group that pays no attention to proper Muslim or human conduct.

While many Iraqis abhor the way the execution took place, they cannot but denounce the way the U.S. orchestrated the event and its aftermath.

American officials appeared one after another saying they would have done the execution differently and that they had advised Maliki's Shiite-dominated government against having Saddam killed on the first day of the Muslim feast of al-Adha.

The Americans used the mobile video of the hanging to extricate themselves from its consequences, putting it squarely on the shoulders of the Shiites and their government.

While taunting Saddam with sectarian remarks during his execution was totally unacceptable, Iraqis are smart enough not to believe Washington's version of the story. The Americans could have delayed handing over Saddam Hussein and could have supervised the hanging, just as they now supervise - and in fact administer - the implosion of this nation.

The Americans want Iraqis to believe they had nothing to do with the hanging, but they would be naive to think that Iraqis will believe this. The hanging and the preceding trial was not a purely Iraqi affair. Whatever good happens in Iraq, of which there is none, and whatever bad happens, which is everywhere, it is purely America's responsibility.

But they want to extricate themselves from Saddam Hussein's hanging to distort the image of Shiites and particularly Moqtada al-Sadr RealVideo in Sunni eyes.

Even the Kurds have distanced themselves from the hanging, as President Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, refused to sign the execution order.

So the Americans, who waged the entire war to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and the Kurds, who were his major victims, claim they had nothing to do with his execution. The Americans want to tell Iraqis that the Shiites killed Saddam and that the Shiites were the ones who broke the law by hanging him.

The Americans have even said that Maliki's government refused to deliver Saddam's corpse to his relatives, and that they had to intervene to get the corpse and fly it to his hometown in Tikrit.

This is a U.S. trap based on lies and fabrication that are targeted at Maliki's government and the Shiites that support him. Beware Maliki.