Bush adopts proper stance in talking about Saddam

No one should doubt that when the times comes, President George W. Bush will use the capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as a cornerstone of his re-election campaign in 2004. For now, however, Bush is going to great lengths to downplay the political advantages this dramatic event offers. That's how it should be.
As the president noted in brief remarks to the nation Sunday and at his year-end press conference Monday, it is the Iraqi people who should revel in the capture of the Butcher of Baghdad. After all, tens of thousands of Iraqis perished during his reign of terror.
Bush struck just the right note in talking about how American forces, acting on painstakingly developed intelligence, undertook one of the most intensive manhunts in history and found Saddam in an underground hideout on a farm in Adwar, 10 miles from his hometown of Tikrit.
"There needs to be a public trial and all the atrocities need to come out and justice needs to be delivered," the president said during the session with journalists at the White House. But he sidestepped the question of whether he favors Saddam's execution, saying his own personal views don't matter.
Bush did allow himself one brief moment of gloating when he said, "Good riddance. The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein."
Indeed, the world is better off without this murderous dictator, now in the custody of the United States. Only his public trial on crimes against the people of Iraq in particular and against humanity in general will match the significance of Saturday's operation.
Religious persecution
It won't just be the former president of Iraq on trial. Rather it will be every brutal dictator who has shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents. Likewise, it isn't just Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader, facing war crimes charges in The Hague, Netherlands; it's all the others of his ilk who indulged or continue to indulge in ethnic cleansing or religious persecution.
That is why it is so important for Saddam to be brought to justice in the country he literally destroyed through his iron-fisted rule and his megalomania. The elderly and the very young in Iraq were his chief victims. They deserve to see this man brought to trial in chains to answer for his crimes.
But while he was characterizing the capture of Saddam as evidence that Iraq is "on the path to freedom," President Bush was careful not to exaggerate the effects of capturing him and bringing him to justice.
"The terrorists in Iraq remain dangerous," he said. "The work of our coalition remains difficult and will require further sacrifice."
Such an honest appraisal of what lies ahead in that country is to be applauded. After all, the president and members of the inner circle are still refusing to concede that the reasons given for the war against Saddam's Iraq earlier this year were not based on hard evidence or even fact.
But with Saddam now in custody and undergoing interrogation, perhaps these two questions will be answered: Did you have weapons of mass destruction in your possession at the time of the invasion by American and British troops? Did your regime have any ties to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida terrorist network?