Saddam had feisty exchange at the gallows

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqis awoke Saturday to television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam Hussein's neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope.

In Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare was not far off the daily average -- 92 from bombings and death squads.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, his hometown.

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge.

Scornful words

"He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians," Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution."

"I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans," Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.

"God damn you," the guard said.

"God damn you," responded Saddam.

New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early today, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed along with his sister in 1980 by Saddam.

Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.

Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site.

Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.

The floor dropped out of the gallows.

"The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted.

At least 80 Iraqis died in bombings and other attacks Saturday, and police said 12 more tortured bodies were found dumped in Baghdad. The U.S. military announced six more service members -- three soldiers and three Marines -- were killed.

There were cheers at the cafeteria of a U.S. outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Saddam had been hanged.

Staff Sgt. David Earp, who also fought in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, said the execution worried him.

"In my opinion, something big is going to happen," said Earp, of Colorado Springs, Colo. "There will be a response. Probably not today because they know we are looking for one, but soon."