Bush: Good Riddance, Mr. Saddam
President Bush promised a fair, public trial for Saddam Hussein on Monday but also said "he's a torturer and a killer" and can't be trusted to tell interrogators the truth about weapons of mass destruction or attacks against Americans in Iraq.
Asked if Saddam should face the death penalty, Mr. Bush said, "I have my personal views. And this is a brutal dictator."
"He's a person who killed a lot of people. But my views, my personal views, aren't important in this matter," the president said.
Two days after Saddam's capture in a farmhouse burrow, President Bush held a year-end news conference and delivered his own verdict on the deposed Iraqi leader, whom the administration blames for hundreds of thousands of mass executions:
"Good riddance. The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein."
Iraqi leaders, meanwhile, were less restrained in delivering their verdict, saying Monday they want to send Saddam to a quick trial with an eye toward executing him by summer. But U.S. officials signaled the Iraqis may have to wait.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the world body would not support bringing Saddam before a tribunal that might sentence him to death, and human rights groups were appalled at the rush to a trial they said was crucial to starting a healing process in this war-shattered land.
Members of the U.S.-appointed Iraq Governing Council said Monday the trial would be televised in the interest of exposing Saddam's atrocities and beginning a process of national healing. But some couldn't hold back from declaring the verdict a done deal.
"This man has killed hundreds of thousands of people. If he has to be killed once, I think he has to be resurrected hundreds of times and killed again," said council member Mouwafak al-Rabii, a human rights activist who was imprisoned under Saddam.
In related developments:
Mr. Bush declined to say where or when or how he would be tried. The president made no commitment to turn him over unconditionally to Iraq, which established a special tribunal last week to try top members of Saddam's government for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He said he would let the legal community decide whether the charges against Saddam should include his 1990 invasion of Kuwait or his alleged assassination plot against Mr. Bush's father.
CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports Saddam is being held in Iraq, where he's being questioned by his American captors.
Sometimes sarcastic, always defiant, he has denied harboring weapons of mass destructions or any links to the terrorist group al Qaeda. He has refused to answer any direct questions about the militant movement he had cheered on from hiding.
Four Iraqi governing council members who met Saddam Sunday night, say he was foul-mouthed, and sometimes incoherent.
"Demoralized, miserable, really broken person when we saw him, but he was defiant, unrepentant, and has no remorse," Dr. Mowaffaq al Rubaie told CBS News.
The State Department said the Iraqi tribunal plan provides a role for international advisers, judges, prosecutors and other members of the court. Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, will go to Baghdad early next year to work with Iraqis on establishing the court, said Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman.
Questions about Saddam dominated Mr. Bush's 48-minute news conference. And the president took the opportunity — repeatedly — to build an indictment against Saddam as a murderous tyrant who could not be trusted to clear up questions about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or whether Saddam had ties to terrorist groups.
"I mean, he's a deceiver, he's a liar, he's a torturer, he's a murderer," Mr. Bush said.
He said Saddam had been willing "to destroy his country and to kill a lot of his fellow citizens" and used weapons of mass destruction against people in his own country. "He is the kind of person that is untrustworthy and I'd be very cautious about relying upon his word in any way, shape or form."
The president spoke as former Secretary of State James A. Baker III prepared for an overseas trip in search of promises to ease Iraq's burden of foreign debt. Starting in Paris, Baker will visit France, Germany, Italy, Britain and Russia.
Mr. Bush readily acknowledged sharp differences with allies, saying, "What you're talking about is France and Germany, truth be known." But he sought to limit the boundaries of the dispute to opposition to the U.S.-led war rather than issues such as France's and Germany's refusal to contribute troops or money for Iraq's reconstruction, or their anger at being excluded from rebuilding contracts.
"So I don't agree that this is a dividing line," the president said. "I think this is a disagreement on this particular issue."
Meanwhile, U.S. authorities are investigating whether $750,000 found in Saddam Hussein's hideaway was part of the loot snatched from Iraqi's central bank at the onset of the war.
The government hopes the deposed Iraqi president's capture might provide new insights into how terrorists raise and move money.
Juan Zarate, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, said Monday that a multiagency team is trying to determine whether the cash is genuine and is looking at serial numbers to trace where the money came from.
The prime hypothesis, Zarate said, is that the money was part of the roughly $1 billion that Saddam and his family took in late March or early April, shortly before the United States began bombing Baghdad.
All but about $100 million of the cash taken from the Iraq central bank has been recovered, Zarate said.
Mr. Bush said Saddam's capture should reassure Iraqis that the former president will not return to power. He described some Iraqis as "fence-sitters," staying on the sidelines as Iraq moved toward democracy. Saddam "can no longer provide any excuse for some who were afraid to act," Mr. Bush said.
Nevertheless, he said there will be more violence from Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists "that cannot stand the thought of a free Iraq emerging in the Middle East."
On Monday, there were two more car bombs at two police stations in Baghdad, which killed at least eight Iraqis. And U.S. troops were bracing for more.