Welcome back to the re-education. Today's show looks at the man who performed a hostile takeover of the Iraqi state in 1979. Saddam Hussein. His reign ended 20 years ago this week because George W. Bush decided to take him out. My guest is one of the officials who knows this story from the inside. David Wormser, he served as a Pentagon analyst

and later an advisor to Vice President Cheney

during George W. Bush's administration.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi government has announced plans

to investigate why Saddam Hussein was

taunted in the final moments before his hanging.

Cell phone footage shows masked guards chanted the name of Shiat, Clarak Maktad al-Sadr,

and then told the former Iraqi president to go to hell.

The treatment of Saddam Hussein has sparked protests around the

world. Former NBC news anchor Tom Brokha said Hussein's execution, quote, resembled the worst kind of

nightmare out of the old American West. That was Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, summing up the reaction

to the execution on December 30, 2006, of one of the

worst tyrants in modern Middle Eastern history, Saddam Hussein. Even Tom Brokaw is disappointed.

And it's true. Many progressives at the time, already disgusted by the grinding civil war in Iraq,

seized on the vengeful quality of the hanging, the cell phone video, the Sadrish chant,

has more evidence that the war that rid the world of this demon was a waste.

What kind of democracy hangs its last leader while the executioner shouts that he's going to hell?

Well, I understand the point,outs that he's going to hell.

Well, I understand the point, but it's a bit more complicated.

And here, my thoughts turn to the fate of Benito Mussolini.

He and his mistress were taken to a farmhouse, lined up against a wall, and sprayed with submachine gun bullets.

And then their torches were taken to Piazzello Loretto in Milan, and throngs of furious

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