Video of Saddam's Funeral

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Here is another leaked video, this one of Saddam's funeral and burial in Al Awja, near Tikrit. Al Awja is the small town near Tikrit where Saddam was born. It's over 10 minutes long, so if you are impatient, you may wish to forgo it. The quality of most of this video is actually quite good, although I suspect it was also shot with a cellphone.

The funeral and burial took place in the dead of night, and there was not a woman to be seen. Even if you can't understand a word of Arabic, it's impossible to not hear the continuous cries of "Allahu Akbar" punching the desert air.

The scene, like the one at the execution, was one of pandemonium, chaos, rage, menace and vengeance. But this is a different kind of revenge gathering.

While Saddam's execution was a victorious, joyful, sectarian Iraqi Shia revenge party for the Dawa Party (and to a lesser extent the SCIRI Party and Mahdi Army) his funeral was a mournful rage-session for Iraq's Sunnis. The menace in the air here, not to mention the masked insurgents or insurgent supporters, is palpable enough to send shivers down your spine.

The main question in Iraq right now is how to tamp down the mad sectarian frenzy that is eating Iraq alive. The videos of the execution and now of the funeral are evidence that Saddam's execution will only feed the murderous bonfire, and therefore it was not a positive thing.

I really don't know who these Iraqi Sunnis in the video are. They are probably Sunnis from the Tikrit area, long a hotbed of support for Saddam Hussein. Are they Baath Party members? Are they supporters of the sick, deranged Sunni fundamentalists now ripping Iraq apart like hyenas on a corpse? I can't answer those questions; maybe someone else can.

I only know that this is a video of a bunch of really pissed-off Iraqi men out for payback and blood. And in the context of today's Iraq, that is a terrifying thing.