Opinion: Saddam death video: No money shot, but still orgasmic

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Want to see your tax dollars at work, in a demonstration more incandescantly revealing than the light of a thousand suns? Get out there and find an uncut video of Saddam Hussein’s execution, which looks like nothing so much as a gang killing befitting the legendary Godfather fanatic. (On the off-chance killing of Saddam finally eliminates the Godfather pictures as a cultural touchstone, it will all have been worth it.) After all the blood and treasure we’ve spent in Iraq, this is the most professional job we can get? The ski-masked hangmen, according to one eyewitness, danced around the corpse. Remember: These are the good guys doing the killing here.

No Rocky Sullivan waterworks for the bully of Baghdad, by the way. Saddam takes it like a man for the duration of the ordeal available here. I just wish we could see the whole thing. At times like these I wish for Arab TV news, which knows no coyness when it comes to delivering grisly death. I also wish our own state-sponsored killing were done with this kind of brio. The more we dress up execution with humane cocktails of poison and gas, the more horrific it is revealed to be. Our own executions could stand a little more honesty about the sacrament of human sacrifice and everything that it entails.