John Edwards wraps the Iraq war around John McCain’s neck.

An investigation? Now the Maliki government is going to investigate the ‘Moktada’ chants at Saddam’s execution and the leaking of the phone-cam snuff film?

First of all, wasn’t it filmed? And wasn’t it clear that the hooded guys were among the chanters and taunters? Does the Maliki government know who the guys in the masks were? Or were they on special detail from the Mahdi Army?

One question seems to be who got into the room with a cell phone that allowed the surreptitious recording …

Munqith al-Faroon, an Iraqi prosecutor whose job was to convict Saddam Hussein of genocide, was one of the small group of witnesses at the hanging and defended Saddam’s right to die in peace.

He said he knew that “two top officials … had their mobile phones with them” at the execution, although other witnesses had their phones taken away beforehand.

But maybe they should start the investigation down in Atlanta with the folks at CNN. Here’s what CNN reported shortly after the execution …

Many of those who witnessed the execution celebrated in the aftermath.

“Saddam’s body is in front me,” said an official in the prime minister’s office when CNN telephoned. “It’s over.”

In the background, Shiite chanting could be heard. When asked about the chanting, the official said, “These are employees of the prime minister’s office and government chanting in celebration.”

He said that celebrations broke out after Hussein was dead, and that there was “dancing around the body.”

Sounds like that dude had a cell phone, doesn’t it?

This passage makes it a little ambiguous whether this government official was in the execution chamber or somewhere in the prime minister’s office where they took Saddam’s body. Another version of the story that CNN ran a few hours later leaves no doubt …

A witness to Saddam Hussein’s execution in Baghdad said that celebrations broke out after the former dictator died, and that there was “dancing around the body.”

“Saddam’s body is in front me,” said an official in the prime minister’s office when CNN telephoned. “It’s over.”

In the background, Shiite chanting could be heard. When asked about the chanting, the official said

“These are employees of the prime minister’s office and government chanting in celebration.”

I take it that this government ‘investigation’ will be highly impartial.

Lovely: Bush on Gen. Casey, for ’em before he was aginst ’em.

Was the guy who took the Saddam hanging snuff film that’s lighting up the internet none other than the Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser?

As we noted earlier, the Maliki government has now begun an ‘investigation’ into who chanted the praises of Moktada al Sadr at Saddam Hussein’s execution and who took a grainy snuff film video of the final moments with a cell phone camera and then let it out on the internet.

According to the Post, Munqith al-Faroun, the deputy prosecutor at the trial, said he saw two senior officials using cell phones to record the events.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. When I excerpted a passage from the Post piece this afternoon, it read like this …

He said he knew that “two top officials … had their mobile phones with them” at the execution, although other witnesses had their phones taken away beforehand.

That passage has now been replaced by a new one which contains more details but has al-Faroun less clear on who the people were …

The probe could implicate senior Iraqi officials. Munqith al-Faroun, the deputy prosecutor in Hussein’s trial, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he saw two official observers using their cellphones to record Hussein’s last moments. The two men, he said, were “recording through their mobiles openly.” He said he did not recognize them, but could do so if he saw them again.

Maliki aides said they did not think any officials were behind the video.

“I think [it was] one of the guards, but let us leave everything to the inquiry,” Rikabi said.

“I am confident that they were not the guards, for I checked the guards. I kept them under my eye,” Faroun said. “They were not people who came off the street.” Iraqi officials had been flown in by two U.S. helicopters from the Green Zone an hour before the execution.

But al-Faroun told a significantly different story to reporters for the New York Times …

… one of the officials who attended the hanging, a prosecutor at the trial that condemned Mr. Hussein to death, said that one of two men he had seen holding a cellphone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments — up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor — was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser. Attempts to reach Mr. Rubaie were unsuccessful. The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, said the other man holding a cellphone above his head was also an official, but he could not recall his name.

Apparently everyone else had had their cell phones confiscated, even al-Faroun.

Now, stay with me.

It turns out that at least one official in Maliki’s government spoke to CNN by cellphone from the execution chamber just moments after the sentence had been carried out. In a report which appeared overnight on December 29th …

Many of those who witnessed the execution celebrated in the aftermath.

“Saddam’s body is in front me,” said an official in the prime minister’s office when CNN telephoned. “It’s over.

“In the background, Shiite chanting could be heard. When asked about the chanting, the official said, “These are employees of the prime minister’s office and government chanting in celebration.

“He said that celebrations broke out after Hussein was dead, and that there was “dancing around the body.”

This passage appeared in at least four CNN reports and usually tucked in amidst a series of on the record quotes from al-Rubaie — a thin evidentiary reed certainly, but a suggestive one given the content that has subsequently revealed itself.

What does CNN have to say? Any thoughts, guys?

Late Update: Seems Mr. al-Rubaie makes a lot of calls in to CNN. TPM Reader AL dug up this transcript from the Anderson Cooper show on the 29th in which Anderson interviews al-Rubaie. And among other things, al-Rubaie denies reports that there was anything untoward about how the execution was carried out …

Before he went — of course, this process, 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.

DOJ to Sen. Leahy (D-VT) on secret CIA prisons document request: Go screw yourself.

Well, the Dems don’t mean to cause no trouble/They just came to do the K Street Shuffle. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

Mystery solved! From the AP:

The person believed to have recorded Saddam Hussein’s execution on a cell phone camera was arrested Wednesday, an adviser to Iraq’s prime minister said.

The adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, did not identify the person. But he said it was “an official who supervised the execution” and who is “now under investigation.”

****

On Wednesday, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie of possible responsibility for the leaked video.

“I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures,” Munqith al-Faroon, a prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press.

“But I saw two of the government officials who were … present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces,” al-Faroon said in a telephone interview.

What a big misunderstanding.

Can anybody here make any sense of the Rudy camp’s explanation for that leaked campaign memo? We can’t.

Update: Still more info emerges about the great strategy memo caper — and the Rudy campaign’s explanation grows still more convoluted.

So many lessons to be drawn from the execution of Saddam Hussein. High on the list now: if you’re only a deputy prosecutor at the war crimes trial, don’t accuse the country’s National Security Advisor of shooting the execution snuff tape.

It gets better and better. Now al-Rubaie denies ever having a cell phone in the execution chamber: “I had no camera and no mobile phone with me. I handed my mobile over to my assistant before getting on the American helicopter that took us to the scene.”

Speaking of Iraqis who may need asylum in the US, how about Munkith al-Faroun? He’s the deputy prosecutor who first ID’d Rubaie as the cell-phone videographer. He was also the one overheard on the tapes appealing for order and an end of the taunting just before the hanging (clearly the guy has no sense o fun). Now he’s recanted …