AllahPundit has edited President Bush’s appearance on “60 Minutes” last night down to 3:28 of highlights.

Perhaps most interesting is the president’s assertion that the Iraqi people owe us a “great debt of gratitude” for our liberation and that he therefore owes them no apologies for the ensuing mess.

AP wonders, “Why was the president of the United States forced to watch video of the execution on the Internet with the rest of us schmucks? Is our intel in Iraq so poor now that the CIA couldn’t get its own copy from the Iraqi government?” A bit puzzling, to be sure.

Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief and top judge were hanged early this morning.

Saddam Hussein’s half brother and the former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court were both hanged before dawn Monday, officials said, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed in a chaotic scene that has drawn worldwide criticism. Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam’s half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, had been found guilty along with Saddam in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh confirmed the executions, saying those attending the hangings included a prosecutor, a judge and a physician. He also said Ibrahim’s head was severed from his body during his hanging. “In a rare incident, the head of the accused Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan was separated from his body during the execution,” al-Dabbagh told reporters.

The executions reportedly occurred in the same Saddam-era military intelligence headquarters building in north Baghdad where the former leader was hanged two days before the end of 2006, according to an Iraqi general, who would not allow use of his name because he was not authorized to release the information. The building is located in the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah.

The two men were to have been hanged along with Saddam on Dec. 30, but Iraqi authorities decided to execute Saddam alone on what National Security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie called a “special day.”

The Washington Post buried a similar summary on A12, making it a footnote to Saddam’s execution, so the “special day” goal would seem to have been reached. My guess is that they did a better job this time to ensure no private video cameras were present, although the interest in seeming them would be much less than it was for the big guy.

UPDATE: John Burns and Marc Santora have a more extensive report for NYT.

The executions come just two weeks after Mr. Hussein’s hanging caused considerable criticism around the world because of the way it was carried out, including guards cursing the former dictator as he stood on the gallows.

American military officials, who had custody of Mr. Hussein, were particularly upset and pushed hard to ensure that the execution of his co-defendants, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former head of the Mukhabarat secret police and the younger half-brother of Mr. Hussein, and Awad Hamad al-Bandar, who was chief judge of the revolutionary court under Mr. Hussein, was carried out properly.

The government spokesman who announced the executions, which took place at 3 a.m., Bassam al-Husseini, said both the executioners and the witnesses had to sign statements promising to behave in a dignified manner.

[...]

A senior American official said over the weekend that Mr. Tikriti and Mr. Bandar would not be handed over to Iraqi officials for execution until the Iraqis present detailed plans that satisfied the Americans that there would be no repeat of the abusive treatment Mr. Hussein was exposed to before he was hanged.

It would appear the Iraqi government is not quite as “sovereign” as advertised.

Rusty Shackleford reports,

A video showing Saddam Hussein shortly after he was executed has emerged on the internet. The video and images from it are shown below. The first uncut, uncensored, unedited video showing Saddam Hussein executed caused quite a stir. Another video of Saddam’s funeral has also been making the rounds.

This video does not show the execution. Rather, it shows Saddam’s body, proportedly right after he was hanged. The short video simply shows Saddam’s corpse under a sheet, and the effects that hanging had on his neck.

The video seems to have first emerged at a Shia website in Arabic, after which it was uploaded to Google.

Here’s the video:

Rusty has several rather graphic photos captured from the video as well.

UPDATE: AP has a substantial write-up, including a description of the video.

A new video of Saddam Hussein’s corpse, with a gaping neck wound, was posted on the Internet early Tuesday, the second leaked release of clandestine pictures from the former leader’s hanging.
The video appeared to have been taken with a camera phone, like the graphic video of the hanging which showed guards taunting Saddam in the final moments of his life.

The footage pans up the shrouded body of the former leader from the feet. It apparently was taken shortly after Saddam was executed and placed on a gurney. He was hanged shortly before dawn on Dec. 30. As the panning shot reaches the head region, the white shroud is pulled back and reveals Saddam’s head and neck. His head is unnaturally twisted at a 90 degree angle to his right. It shows a gaping bloody wound, circular in shape, about an inch below his jaw line on the left side of his neck. His left cheek is marked with red blotches, and there is blood on the shroud where it covered his head.

The newest video leak was likely to increase the angry reaction over the way the execution was carried out. There already has been a global outcry about the undignified manner in which the Shiite-dominated government hanged Saddam, a Sunni.

The 27-second video was posted on an Iraqi news Web site that is known to support Saddam’s outlawed Baath Party. “A new film of the late immortal martyr, President Saddam Hussein,” the web site said in a headline over a link to the video.

Voices could be heard on the video. As the shroud is pulled back, one voice says, “Hurry up, hurry up. I’m going to count from one to four. One, two … . Hurry up you’re going to get us into a catastrophe.” Then another voice, apparently the man taking the pictures, says, “Just one second, just one second, Abu Ali. I’m about finished.” Then a third voice says, “Abu Ali, you take care of this.”

It was the second clandestine video to have leaked, the first showing Saddam being taunted in his final moments. That clandestine video showed the former leader dropping through the gallows floor as he offered chanted prayers. It ends with his dead body swinging at the end of a rope.

The hanging video was in sharp contrast with an official video that was broadcast not long after Saddam’s execution which showed him standing silently on the gallows as the noose was put around his neck. The official video was muted.

The leaked hanging video, however, was shot from the floor of the gallows chamber, looking up at Saddam. Voices could be heard taunting him with cries of “Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada,” referring to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia and a key support of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Saddam Hussein is dead.

Some Arab media, including state-run Iraqiya television, Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya and the U.S.-financed Al-Hurra, reported about an hour before daylight Saturday (about 10 p.m. EST Friday) that Saddam had been executed. There was no confirmation from the Iraqi government.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam’s execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction to interfere in another country’s judicial process. The ruling can be appealed, but it was issued within an hour of the time Iraqi officials said they expected the execution to be carried out.

Saddam and others were convicted of murder in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill Saddam in 1982. Also to be hanged were Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, the adviser said.

WaPo has the following graphic:

They have a collection of videos and other features under the heading “The Life of a Dictator.”

NYT merely has this: “Breaking News 10:37 PM ET: Saddam Hussein Has Been Executed, According to a Senior American Official in Baghdad.”

Drudge broke out TWO sirens:

He also provides this chronology of network coverage: “CNN Broke at 10:06… NBC first broadcast net to report execution of Hussein at 10:14 pm, ET — CBS went up at 10:18 — ABC up at 10:25…”

South Park, of course, anticipated this some time back:

More gruesome videos, I’m sure, will follow.

UPDATE: The blogospheric reaction has been, as might be expected, substantial despite the inconvenient timing of this during a holiday lull. Lots of discussion of ethics and efficacy.

• Leopold Stotch believes too many conservatives have lost sight of the difference between justice and vengeance.
• Richard Fernandez observes that, “US forces kept custody before and after his execution to prevent his corpse from being desecrated in a society where justice is often regarded as inseparable from revenge.”
• Warner Todd Huston argues the AP is “misusing words” to “lead us to feel that this execution isn’t justice, but is mere vengence.”
• John Cole has mixed emotions: “While justice was served with the death of Saddam, it is hard to not feel like this is little more than revenge…”
• Marty Peretz believes this a special case: “Even if Saddam is not exactly in the category of Eichmann, he–like Pol Pot and other leaders of deliberately killer regimes–has no claim on our conscience.”
• Andrew Cochran: “The execution will have no impact on the current situation in Iraq, other than being cited as another excuse for more terrorism by Sunni insurgents. But Saddam was a mass murderer and a tyrant. To the best of my knowledge, he was the only ruler in the past 50 years who used chemical weapons on his own people and against another country.”
• Robert Farley tells Saddam: “Enjoy sharing the hotseat with Augusto Pinochet. In fairness, you made the General look like a rank amateur.”
• Bruce McQuain: “I’m sure Hell’s VIP room is occupied tonight.”
• Steven Taylor, who thinks the trial was a wasted opportunity, has some wishes: “May his victims rest in peace. And may his demise not be used as excuse for further violence, although I fear that hope will not come to fruition.”
• Steve Bainbridge has a thorough discussion of Roman Catholic teaching on capital punishment and why he believes executing Saddam is justified.
• Kevin Hayden notes that Saddam was not Osama and that a lot of guys were trying to kill him, so it’s no big deal that he murdered a couple hundred thousand people a while back.
• Creature: “Evil dictators rule throughout the world. They kill and oppress their people. This one is now dead, not because of the horrible acts he committed — the worst of which came with America’s approval — but because Bush, Cheney et al. had an agenda.”
• Jim Henley believes “the US and its Iraqi allies chose to try Saddam on one of his relatively minor crimes because if they did so they could get him safely hung before they had to try him for the major ones, the gas attacks and massacres that happened during The Years of Playing Footsie with the United States.”
• Ezra Klein is “not remotely convinced that turning Hussein into a martyr to satiate our need for vengeance is the wisest strategic decision in the long run.”
• Shakespeare’s Sister quotes him.
• Merv Benson says “Good riddance.”
• Tammy Bruce, too.
• Dr. Sanity pens an Eric Claptonesque satire, “Cheers in Heaven.”
• Patrick plans to “ululate, pass out sweets, and fire a few rounds off into the sky.”
• Jimmie: “I hope he heard the voices of every single person he killed.”
• Jill: “Six days ago this country celebrated the birth of a prince of peace. Tonight we spit on his memory by indulging in a death-gasm.”
• Aazmaaish has some photos of Saddam being shackled in preparation for the hanging. [Reader sandcrab points out that these are likely from the trial, since Saddam is in a different suit than he's hanged in.]
• Josh Marshall contends “this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.”
• Serr8d believes dark days are ahead: “A realization by the majority of Humanity that Hussein (or Stalin, or Hitler, or Pol Pot, or whoever) is truly a murderous dictator is never enough for another fragment of humanity who has lost a hero. Saddam Hussein will be avenged…by someone, in a never ending cycle of vengence and revengence.”
• egalia notes that President Bush “slept through it, just like it was a hurricane or something.”
• John Little has a good news links roundup.
• Ed Morrissey, without apparent irony, liveblogged the execution.
• Greyhawk: “Perhaps because I’ve been there, done that, and will again I just don’t share the enthusiasm expressed as so many exclamation points (!!!!) and cheers from so many bloggers who haven’t and never will.”

After all that, more South Park is needed (warning: vulgar language):

Screen captures of various MSM websites and their coverage of the Saddam execution:

Click the thumbnails for larger images.

Photos of Saddam being prepared for execution and with a rope around his neck found at various places (I had these below the fold but all the MSM outlets are plastering them on their front pages, so it seems silly):

***UPDATE*** Gone Hollywood has the execution video, minus sound.