On Mr. al-Rubaie’s evolving recollections …

al Rubaie on Dec. 29th …

the whole process from A to Z has been videoed, and it’s kept in a safe place, and there was absolutely no humiliation to Saddam Hussein when he was alive, and after he was executed. So there was no — there was all respect to him, when he was alive, and after the execution when he was like a body, if you like. I’m honestly proud of the way it was executed. It was done in a proper way, in all the international standards and the Islamic standards, and Iraqi standards. I’m really proud of the way it went on …

And today …

Iraq’s National Security Adviser, Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, said the shouting was “unprofessional, disgusting and shouldn’t have happened”.

“This was supposed to be a uniting event between Shia and Sunni,” Mr Rubaie told Sky TV, adding that Iraq’s government would punish those found to be involved.

Maybe he should look at his cell phone video again to remind him?

(ed.note: Special thanks to sleuthing from TPM Reader AL.)

Oh, we’ll miss you, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA). Already gone, he got kicked in the pants today by the House ethics committee.

Great moments in chat show journalism: Chris Matthews asks, Was Jerry Ford a nice guy or a real nice guy …

First in a series, no doubt.

A stern view from TPM Reader JG …

Reading your detailed post on the sorry spectacle of the Hussein execution and the pathetic responses by the right wing bloggers, it struck me that this is a repeating theme for this crew. They don’t really believe in democracy, they don’t really believe in the rule of law, or in impartial justice. Every Bush effort, and every Republican effort, since the Iraq war got started has the same touches on it as this sorry spectacle, rush things to fit political time tables, ride over the rule of law, chaos, incomptence, and the country looking worse at the end of it. Some of your readers don’t understand the problem, but it’s the same problem as what’s going on in Gitmo and god knows where else, it’s all of a piece. Rule of law isn’t some neat extra cool thing that democratic countries came up with because its nice and convenient, it’s like oxygen, entirely necessary. It’s what gives the entire process of justice something more than simple bloodletting. We see the consequences of a lack of respect for the rule of law in the savegery of Saddam’s execution, do we imagine that these thugs are any less savage to anybody else they deem “guilty” but is actually simple an innocent from the wrong tribe? The longer this thing goes on, the more clear it becomes that the current Iraqi government is the child of its Republican fathers in every meaningful way. Are we suppossed to imagine that a (Republican) government which is so clearly incompetent, dangerious, savage when it can get away with it, elevates politcal theatre above actual results, and plays hard to its base somehow created a government that does the *same exact things* in Iraq (where those tendencies have even worse results) by *accident* or *coincidence*? No. The Iraqi government is as much an import from the US as the US solders sustaining it are.

I mainly agree on the issue of the provenance of the new Iraqi regime. But I’d say it’s married the worst of what they have to offer with the worst from us. And that ain’t a pretty picture. Or video.

If I’d told you last January that one year from now, House Republicans will be crying about Democrats making deals in smoke-filled rooms, would you have believed it?

Let’s do a little credibility recap in the evolving Saddam snuff film whodunit.

Munkith al-Faroun was a prosecutor at Saddam’s trial. And by all accounts he was the one at the execution demanding that the executioners stop their taunts and harangues and complete the process in a dignified way. “Please, I am begging you not to. The man is being executed,” he is heard saying on the now-infamous cell-phone vid.

al-Faroun first said that he saw two Maliki government officials making videos of the execution by holding up their cell phones as the events took place. He later identified one of the two men as Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie. In response to Maliki government claims that it was one of the guards who took the cell phone video, al-Faroun said, not likely. “I am confident that they were not the guards, for I checked the guards. I kept them under my eye,” he said.

As the intensity of the scrutiny into the story rose overnight, al-Faroun recanted his claim to have seen al-Rubaie making a video of the execution: “I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures.”

Now, as a result of the Maliki government investigation, one of the guards has been arrested for making the video tape, according to the New York Times. But Maliki’s spokesman, Sadiq al-Rikabi, won’t say who the guard is, why he did the filming or where he’s being held in Baghdad. “It is clear that it was only one person doing that filming, and he has been arrested.”

Remember, at least one Maliki government official had a cell phone in the chamber. Because he answered the phone with Saddam’s body in front of him when CNN called.

Meanwhile, an unnamed Maliki government official tells the AP that the person arrested was not a guard but “an official who supervised the execution.”

So question of the day. Who would you rather be right now? The ‘guard’ who is currently in custody? Or Mr. al-Faroun?

Dems so surprised they won on election day that they hadn’t done much planning for executive branch oversight.

Rep. Feeney (R-FL) says Abramoff junket was ‘waste of time’ in helping him become more corrupt.

al-Rubaie’s latest: Arab TV networks snuck videotaper into the execution chamber!

Rubaie, courtesy of CNN, “I believe there was an infiltration to the crowd inside the chamber. These people have done a lot of harm, and I honestly believe that this may well have been planned by one of these Arab television channels infiltrating, and probably this video has been sold to this Arab television station.”

Administration official: Surge “more of a political decision than a military one.”