The top of Newsweek's online "War in Iraq" section prominently displays a photo of Saddam Hussein, hanging from the gallows. The shot is apparently taken from the infamous cell-phone video of Hussein's hanging.
Mercifully, the editors chose a still in which the dead man's eyes look closed. Still, after all the hand-wringing about showing Saddam "after the drop," when did the magazine decide that it was fine to run what is clearly a photo of a dead man still swinging from the gallows? Was the decision easier after the Associated Press took the photo from an Arab site? (Ed. We were shocked to see a similar photo on the AP Images site; true, it was in the Saddam Hussein section, but it was the second image on first page, with no warning. And it was jarring.) What happened to that late-December squeamishness? Or with the execution on YouTube posted in an assortment of languages and links offering "Click Here To Watch Saddam Die" randomly strewn about the Internet, did Newsweek and the AP just figure that everyone had already seen it, and didn't need a warning?
