Baghdad, Iraq ? The taunts and insults hurled at Saddam Hussein minutes before his execution Saturday have prompted some U.S. officials and Iraqi politicians to conclude that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government is led by Shiite Muslim radicals and can’t be counted on to disarm Shiite militias.

Several U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington told McClatchy Newspapers that, practically speaking, the Bush administration no longer can expect al-Maliki to tackle the militias because Saddam’s hanging exposed the depth of the government’s sectarianism.

The scene at the execution “confirms everyone’s worst speculations about the government: It is sectarian and incompetent,” said a U.S. official who agreed to speak under a promise of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. The militias and al-Maliki’s government are intertwined “so much that you don’t know for sure from issue to issue what is the militia and what is the government,” the official said.

That assessment underscores the Bush administration’s challenge as it considers sending thousands of additional U.S. troops to confront Iraq’s growing sectarian violence.

President Bush, who’s expected to announce a new Iraq policy next week, has vowed to support al-Maliki, who came to power via U.S.-sponsored elections. He’s pushing al-Maliki to disarm the militias, especially the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Many blame the Mahdi Army, which fought two bloody campaigns against U.S. forces in 2004, for much of the violence that’s engulfing Baghdad.

However, a jerky cell-phone video of Saddam’s execution showed that al-Sadr supporters were involved. Amid Shiite chants, at least one witness to the execution can be heard chanting “Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada.”

Someone also can be heard yelling the name of al-Sadr’s uncle, Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, who’s considered the intellectual behind al-Maliki’s Dawa Party.

Sadr’s father, the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, was a prominent Saddam opponent who was murdered in 1999, reportedly on Saddam’s orders.

Some accounts of the execution indicate that al-Maliki’s national security adviser, Mowafek al-Rubaie, quizzed Saddam about the al-Sadr murder before Saddam, who was a Sunni Muslim, was hanged.

An official videotape of the execution didn’t include audio.

Mithal Alusi, a secular parliament member who took part in the government’s deliberations about Saddam’s execution, said the video made it clear that the al-Maliki government was harboring militia members whom it didn’t control. He called the display of emotions a warning that the government must cut its connections to the militias.

“What happened was a clear and lasting warning to Maliki to rid the security services of militias,” said Alusi, one of a handful of secular politicians in the government, who said he supported the decision to hang Saddam quickly. “Why not now?” he answered when asked about the timing of the execution.

But he was critical of the behavior of guards and other witnesses. “This was evidence that those militiamen have forgotten they are official security members,” Alusi said.