URL http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01EFDC1430F936A35752C0A9619C8B63

DATE/ AUTHOR None	AUTHORS: Jeff Zeleny, Helene Cooper

H Lawmakers Criticize Video of Hussein’s Final Minutes

S1 The execution of Saddam Hussein was initially hailed as an example of democratic justice being served in Iraq, but leading members of Congress said Thursday that the conduct surrounding the hanging could undermine United States strategy in Iraq and complicate efforts to help the new Iraqi government succeed.

S2 The White House has declined to criticize the execution, portions of which were shown online in a bootlegged video.
S3 Several Republican senators who have been among President Bush's biggest supporters in the Iraq war said they were troubled by the video and fearful of the reverberations it could provoke.

S4 ''It's a very bad thing, it's harmful, and I'm sorry that it happened,'' said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has been a White House ally on its Iraq policy.
S5 ''Obviously, it unnecessarily inflames the emotions of the Sunnis.''

S6 While the White House says that Mr. Bush has not seen the video -- recorded without authorization with a cellphone camera -- several members of Congress said that they had seen it.
S7 More important, they said, the rest of the world had, too.

S8 As Mr. Bush inches closer to presenting his revised Iraq plan, Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed dismay at the scene surrounding the final minutes of Mr. Hussein's life.
S9 They said it was another sign of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's inability to deal with the sectarian divide in Iraq.

S10 ''It is a very unfortunate episode, and they are still trying to sort out accountability,'' said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia.
S11 ''The key to success in Iraq -- whatever success we are able to achieve -- is reconciliation, and this certainly was not a helpful chapter in that.''

S12 Whether the execution ultimately has political repercussions beyond Iraq and here in the United States remains an open question.
S13 But as senators prepared to be called to the White House as early as Friday for briefings about the president's Iraq plan, the video emerged as a new complication.

S14 In the video, Mr. Hussein was shown standing with the noose around his neck at dawn last Saturday in Baghdad, facing a barrage of mockery and derision from unseen tormentors.
S15 The images showed Mr. Hussein amid shouts of ''Go to hell!''
S16 and ''Moktada!
S17 Moktada!
S18 Moktada!''
S19 in reference to a radical Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr.

S20 Speaking at the White House after a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Thursday, Mr. Bush said he had wished the execution had ''been done in a more dignified way.''
S21 He said he appreciated that Mr. Maliki was investigating the way the execution was handled, but that he did not dwell on it during their video conference on Thursday.
S22 Mr. Bush said Mr. Hussein had received a fair trial, the likes of which his enemies had not.
S23 ''He was given justice; the thousands of people he killed were not,'' Mr. Bush said.

S24 Senator Susan M. Collins, a Maine Republican, said she was troubled by the swiftness of the execution, adding that ''taunting someone who is about to be executed is just blatantly unacceptable.''
S25 The images contained in the video would almost certainly inflame sectarian tensions throughout the region, she said.

S26 ''I have no grief for Saddam Hussein, but it makes it more difficult for Iraqi leaders to forge the political solution that I think is necessary to quell the violence,'' Ms. Collins said.
S27 ''It threatens the very existence of the nation and thousands of Americans and Iraqi lives to have Saddam mocked before his execution.''

S28 It was unclear whether the newly ascendant Democrats in Congress planned to make an issue of the handling of the execution.
S29 It is not likely to be a part of promised Senate hearings on President Bush's Iraq policy, according to aides in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

S30 At the State Department, the official response has been that the execution, while imperfect, is in the past and that people should move on.
S31 But aides to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continued to bemoan what one official called ''the idea that of all the people in that room, Saddam Hussein was the one who looked like he had the most dignity.''

S32 Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican, said the circumstances surrounding the execution were ''another factor that makes life more difficult for the Iraqi government as well as for our hopes for that government and stability.''
S33 But the video, he said, ''is by no means the most difficult issue we are facing in Iraq.''

S34 THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ

