Griper News: Griper Blade: After Saddam Execution, Iraq Govt. Widely Seen as Sectarian and Corrupt

Following up on yesterday's post, the world reaction to Saddam's execution has been overwhelmingly negative. Former italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has called it a "political and historic error." UK PM Tony Blair called the circumstance "completely wrong" and that it "shouldn't have happened that way." Chancellor Gordon Brown, widely expected to follow Blair as PM, said, "Even those people unlike me who are in favour of capital punishment found this completely unacceptable."

As a result, people are taking a second look at the government of iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki and finding it very, very wanting.

McClatchy Newspapers:

The taunts and insults hurled at Saddam Hussein minutes before his execution Saturday have prompted some U.S. officials and Iraqi politicians to conclude that Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's government is led by Shiite Muslim radicals and can't be counted on to disarm Shiite militias.

Several U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington told McClatchy Newspapers that, practically speaking, the Bush administration no longer can expect Maliki to tackle the militias because Saddam's hanging exposed the depth of the government's sectarianism.

The scene at the execution "confirms everyone's worst speculations about the government: It is sectarian and incompetent," said a U.S. official who agreed to speak under a promise of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. The militias and Maliki's government are intertwined "so much that you don't know for sure from issue to issue what is the militia and what is the government," the official said.