This is an interesting piece to critique. Let's start with the original piece by John Burns, who actually seems to be a very well-qualified international reporter. Burns reports accurately what US sources would desperately like everyone to believe--that the US did not want Saddam hanged in haste. But that angle beggars belief, in that Saddam was not turned over to an international criminal court, and the ink on the new "laws" are barely dry, and the reader has no way of knowing which part of it were shoved down the throat of the Iraqis, and which part of the laws are as old as the laws of Hammurabi (rendering the headline totally absurd--Iraqis did not learn "legal"--they passed it down to Western Civilizations, as even the rattlesnake-handling radical Christian sects should be aware). So the first thing to remember is that Burns is reporting accurately, but his sources are lying through their teeth--and their actions contradict their words. Like the public's shocked reaction to the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, in this case the cell-phone video of the hanging is the indictment that overrules the self-serving lies by US officials. In reality, the US public has had a chance to see death squads at work. The remaining mystery here, unfortunately, is that so much of the reporting from Iraq and the middle east has been tainted, that it numbs the public on what to really believe. There is always the nagging sense that we should suspend judgement. The US government's initial versions of the Jessica Lynch story, and the Pat Tillghman story, were 180 degrees wrong. Denials about Abu Ghraib were wrong, and followers of Sy Hersh's career will remember that the Pentagon sought to have the story surpressed on grounds of national security. The Times itself has sat on important stories for more than a year, and of course that has helped to swing the elections in favor of Republicans, so the impact of the Times own criminal negligence is not inconsequential. The Times' own execrible publication of the falsehoods of Judy Miller need not be reviewed here. But it seems evident that the Times staff in New York needs to do a better job of screening stories. Quite possibly, New York has screwed up Burn's original reporting, and slanted it in favor of the D.C. "perfumed princes." It was done in Vietnam, and only years later, with tens of thousands of US soldiers dead, did the Times finally see fit to publish the Pentagon Papers, leaked through Daniel Ellsberg. I trust Burns to do a good job; but the Times record leaves substantial doubt that this is what is actually happening. One only hopes that the phone-video itself is not a hoax. It is a measure of the assembly line of corruption in Washington, D.C. that one tends to doubt even the work of a courageous and hard working reporter like Mr. Burns. As the old adage goes, "you're only as good as your sources." Separately, the blog itself exercises a good degree of skepticism, but doesn't contribute to a real understanding of the facts.