The point about Saddam and that footage is not primarily about his rights or his ill treatment. It's about a failure of the people in charge to adhere to agreed conventions about how prisoners should be treated and displayed which are there to protect ordinary soldiers in all armies. "Serve him right" and "how does that compare with what he's done" may be fair comments, but they are completely beside the point.

Those were the kind of shots that would have been expected, and denounced, from terrorists holding hostages, and would very likely have formed part of a criminal dossier against the people involved, if it came to a war cimes trial.

The highly unusual decision to make available for transmission the footage of a medical examination being carried out on a prisoner is not a matter of journalistic taste or ethics. It was an action of the agents of the US Government, presumably taken in the light of political considerations.