Saddam Hussein deserves the "ultimate penalty" but it will be up to the people of Iraq to decide whether he should be executed, President Bush said Tuesday.
The US leader also said that Iraqis are "capable of conducting the trial themselves."
Bush made his comments in an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer.
"I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty ... for what he has done to his people," the American president said. "I mean, he is a torturer, a murderer, they had rape rooms. This is a disgusting tyrant who deserves justice, the ultimate justice. But that will be decided not by the president of the United States but by the citizens of Iraq in one form or another."
Earlier, it was reported that U.S. troops arrested an Iraqi resistance leader and 78 others in a raid near a town north of Baghdad.
Tuesday's raid captured rebel leader Qais Hattam, No. 5 on the 4th Infantry Division's list of "high value targets," said Capt. Gaven Gregory.
The U.S. troops arrested 78 other people along with Hattam in the raid in the village of Abu Safa, near Samarra, some 100 kilometers north of Baghdad, Gregory said, according to The AP.
Also Tuesday, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Iraq and said U.S. forces might stay in Iraq for one or two years.
"About as far as we are looking is through the next couple of years," Myers said at Baghdad's airport, where he addressed troops.
"It's going to depend on events over the next couple of years," mainly the efforts to create an Iraqi government, he stated. "As far as you can look out is a year, maybe two years. There is going to be a sovereign Iraqi government standing up soon. We're going to have to have negotiations with them," he said, adding: "I'm not saying we're staying for two years. Nobody can say right now." (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
