57% of Americans want Saddam executed

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Most people in the United States want Saddam Hussein to hang if he is convicted at his trial, a view not shared by some of the country's longtime allies. Almost six in 10 in the US, 57 percent, said Saddam should be executed if he is convicted in the trial now in its fifth month in Baghdad. "If he truly destroyed as many lives as they say he did, then he doesn't deserve to live," said Craig Larson, a military retiree who lives in Chesapeake, Virginia. AP-Ipsos polling found that residents of eight other countries - most of whom have abolished the death penalty - prefer that the former Iraqi leader spend life in prison. Similar, but less dramatic, disparities were found when US attitudes were compared to those in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain on whether Saddam is getting a fair trial and whether Iraqis are better off since he was driven from office.