You're either for the death penalty or against it. I am against it. As soon as you start making value judgements over the level of the atrocities you're on a slippery slope. I could give a shit about Saddam Hussein. I would have been excited had bin Laden been captured. He masterminded the murder of Americans. But I still wouldn't want to see him executed. The smirk on Bush's face reminds me of a frat boy who just peed in the punch. What an asshole.
Well, I'm usually big on slippery slope arguments and, when all is said and done, if the decision was actually mine, I don't know what I'd do. Still, I think there are certain cases where the issue of responsibility is so clear, the crimes so immensely vast and calculated -- I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while I'm sure we would be better off not executing Saddam (if only to prevent him from seeming like a martyr) or Bin Laden or Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, etc. that, if anyone should be executed, it'd be them, and I won't be marching in any vigils on their behalf.
He became ruler of Iraq with an awful lot of help from the USA. I've read that he's been on the US government payroll. We sold him the poison gas he used to "gas his own people".
Whatever justice there is in executing him, there's an added benefit that he won't live to talk at length about such realities.