Why, one wonders, does the Iraqi Government need an “inquiry” into the taunting of Saddam Hussein in the moments before his death on Saturday? Having appointed specially selected victims of Saddam’s regime as executioners, one would have thought the reasons for the former dictator’s torment at the gallows were perfectly obvious. Nouri al-Maliki, the country’s Prime Minister, personally sifted through hundreds of e-mail applications for the post of hangman, each with a personal grudge.

Thus it was no surprise that, with the noose around his neck, Saddam was personally abused and forced to listen to chants of support for the radical Shia cleric, Moqtadr al-Sadr. This doesn’t take anything away from the nature of the execution, which anyone with an ounce of humanity will have found revolting. Some would have found it revolting even without the added verbal abuse.

It was indeed horrible to witness how yet another stab at “justice” for the Iraqi people simply degenerated into further fuel for the cycle of revenge. Surrounded by a vengeful, baying mob, Saddam ends up as the person in the room with the most dignity — a perverse reversal of everything the hanging was supposed to achieve. Yesterday Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, condemned the leaking of the mobile phone video footage as “extremely damaging on all fronts”.

Well, of course it’s damaging. But why is Mr al-Rubaie concerned not about what happened, but that we have all seen a video of what happened? It was no coincidence that at the same time that the Iraqi Government announced its investigation into the taunts, it also launched a “clampdown” on media coverage in Iraq of the execution.

It is, of course, too late for that now. But given that Mr al-Rubaie was present at the gallows on Saturday, couldn’t he have done something to stop the taunts, perhaps with a little prior planning of the event, instead of wanting to shoot the messenger? John Prescott, who commented on the matter on the Today programme, should also have been clearer. “Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages (that we have seen) coming out is totally unacceptable,” he said, “and I think whoever was involved or responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves.” So was he attacking what happened, or the leaking of what happened? Worryingly, his words suggest the latter.

Even more chilling than the actions of Saddam’s guards is the thought that without the escape of this amateur video we would still be in the dark about what really happened, and about the true and apparently now official nature of the sectarian forces driving Iraq.

In that we must be thankful for the truth, however sordid it is.

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