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US wanted justice for Saddam Hussein, European Union (EU) wanted mercy ? who won?

The hanging of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein should have had a lot of other mass-murdering despots around the world checking their neck sizes for a noose, but it only ignited more violence and further split the United States and the European Union over what his fate should have been.

The death of Saddam Hussein, on the first day of Eid al-Adha, an important Muslim religious holiday, marked sharp disagreement over not only whether he should have been killed, but whether the death penalty should be revoked worldwide. US President George Bush, who can?t find Osama bin Laden, settled instead for the head of Hussein, who once reportedly tried to assassinate Bush?s father.

Whatever the motive, it succeeded in the regime change the US wanted ? and the EU feared ? but also kick-started debate again about the role of revenge. Bush couldn?t be bothered about the hanging, and went to bed early with instructions not to be awakened at it was happening, which should come as no surprise, since he?s been asleep for the past six years.

Ironically, Hussein?s fate may have been sealed by an Executive Order signed 30 years ago by former President Gerald Ford, who died four days before Hussein. Ford issued Order 11905, section 5(g), that stated: ?No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.?

That meant the US could not, legally at least, have Hussein killed by agents. Instead, the US could bomb and invade Iraq and kill everyone else except him ? until it got its hands on the Iraqi dictator and could set up the court that would, quite properly, convict him for the murders of hundreds of thousands of people. But should Hussein have swung?

There?s one side that said Iraq should have sold tickets to the event instead of carrying it out almost in secret, and maybe acknowledged the US?s role, since that?s who really put Hussein in the gallows, not the puppet government the US is mistakenly propping up.

?Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial - the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime,? Bush said. But many EU countries and institutions weren?t happy, including Russia, which apparently believes in the death penalty only for investigative journalists and dissidents. EU leaders decried the horrors Hussein brought, but they still didn?t want the death penalty for anyone. Oh well, maybe for Hitler.

Lining up to oppose Hussein?s execution were Great Britain ? a supporter of the Irag war ? and opponents Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Amnesty International, and the International Human Rights Federation of Finland. Of course, France took in former Haitian dictator Baby Doc Duvalier for a life of luxury. And if 180,000 Europeans were murdered by a dictator, what would they say then?

Italy was so ?shocked? by what happened to Hussein that it is going to push the United Nations ? which can?t stop genocides anywhere ? for a worldwide end to the death penalty. How about a worldwide end to mass murder?

Amnesty International, predictably, ?deplored? the hanging and what it said was an ?unfair trial.? At least Hussein GOT a trial, which was more than the hundreds of thousands of his victims received. And the weeping and wailing over his taunting should have been reserved for the Kurd mothers lying dead in the streets from gassing on his orders, their dead babies in their arms. How do you think THEY felt at the end as they sucked the air for life?

Iraqi Kurd lawyer Heval Hylan, whose brother was hanged by Saddam?s Baath party, said ?Hitler didn?t do as much as Saddam. It is better now he is gone and this chapter is closed,? but didn?t celebrate the execution. It seems Hussein in death is more trouble than alive.

But maybe the best answer came from Martin Schulz, a German member of the European Parliament, who said ?Keep Saddam alive as the symbol of evil,? and a reminder of what his regime had wrought, and let his victim?s families taunt him instead.

Because now Hussein has become a madman turned martyr and proof that if you give someone enough rope ? even the US and the EU ? they will hang themselves.