Bush: Saddam Hussein's execution will not end violence in Iraq

(AP) President Bush said Friday that Saddam Hussein's execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that his death will not halt the violence in Iraq.

Yet, Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas, "it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

In a message of assurance to the people of Iraq, Bush said the execution was a reminder of how far the Iraqi people have come since the end of Saddam's rule.

"The progress they have made would not have been possible without the continued service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform," he said.

Bush, who has spent weeks crafting a new U.S. policy in Iraq, warned of more challenges for U.S. troops.

"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead," he said. "Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress."

When Saddam was apprehended in 2003, Bush promised that the deposed Iraqi leader would "face the justice he denied to millions." The administration blamed Saddam for hundreds of thousands of mass executions.

In November, Saddam was sentenced to death after being convicted of murder in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill him in 1982.

After three decades in power, Saddam was captured in December 2003 in an underground hideout on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit. Two days later, Bush remarked: "Good riddance. The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein."

The president was briefed at 6:15 p.m. CST by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about the execution procedure, and that it would go forward in the next few hours. Hadley had been in touch with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, who had been in contact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Bush was asleep when the execution occurred.

"The president concluded his day knowing that the final phase of bringing Saddam Hussein to justice was under way," deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said.

As his execution drew near, Saddam's lawyers filed an appeal trying to stave it off.

However, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who heard arguments from attorneys by phone, rejected the challenge Friday night. She said U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction to interfere in another country's judicial process. In the 21-page request filed Friday, Saddam's attorneys argued that because Saddam also faces a civil lawsuit in Washington, he has rights as a civil defendant that would be violated if he is executed. He has not received notice of those rights and the consequences that the lawsuit would have on his estate, his attorneys said.

"To protect those rights, defendant Saddam Hussein requests an order of this court providing a stay of his execution until further notice of this court," attorney Nicholas Gilman wrote.

In Iraq, U.S. forces were ready for any escalation of violence associated with the execution, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said several hours before Saddam was hanged.

Closer to home, Americans were warned by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department to be vigilant about the possibility of a terror attack. The advisory sent to local law enforcement did not cite a specific threat.

American sentiment about the war has changed dramatically since 2003, when jubilant crowds toppled a 40-foot statue of the dictator and a deshelved Saddam, in U.S. custody, was seen on television being examined by a doctor who probed his mouth with a tongue depressor.

Then, Saddam's capture helped Bush's political stature following months of rising casualties and growing doubts about his handling of Iraq. The months-long manhunt for Saddam had damaged U.S. prestige and claims of progress in Iraq.

Now, unrelenting violence and a U.S. death toll nearing 3,000 has sent Bush's approval ratings on the war plumeting to their lowest levels.

Seventy-one percent disapprove of his management of the war; almost two-thirds doubt that a stable, democratic government will ever be established in Iraq, according to early December AP-Ipsos polling.

Bush called the execution a historical moment in Iraq's road to democracy.

"Saddam Hussein's execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops," he saad. "Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

Among the U.S. lawmakers responding to word of Saddam's execution, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he hoped the families of Saddam's victims could now begin "the healing process."

"Iraq has closed one of the darkest chapters in its history and rid the world of a tyrant," Biden said in a statement. "Every effort was made to afford Saddam the judicial rights he denied to the 148 innocent victims of Dujail and to hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis during his brutal reign."

The Republican leader-elect of the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Saddam had finally met justice.

"Today the world was rid of a brutal dictator," McConnell said. "The free people of Iraq must now go forward together to build a unified nation, and leave behind sectarian divisions."