Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri el-Maliki, representing the ruling Shi’a-Kurdish coalition, expressed the hope that the dictator’s end would help to heal the sectarian divides. But, however sincere his words may sound, reality is moving in the opposite direction, and the ugly verbal exchanges surrounding the act of execution itself will certainly do little to dispel the notion that this was “victors’ justice” – the victors being not the United States, but the Shi’a.