Bush Says He’d Be Willing to Give Hussein Safe Passage Out of Iraq
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WASHINGTON — President Bush suggested for the first time Tuesday that he would be willing to give Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein safe passage to another country.
Asked at his news conference whether he agreed with a comment by his wife, Barbara, that Hussein could be tried for war crimes and then hanged, Bush said: “I seldom differ with my wife, and I don’t know that I would differ with her here.”
But, he added, the most important task is “to get Saddam Hussein out of there.”
So, he said, if someone proposes a way to remove Hussein from office, while giving the Iraqi president a guarantee that he could “live a happy life forevermore in some third country, with all kinds of conditions never to go back and brutalize his people again . . . I’d have to think about it, but I might be willing to say: ‘Well, as far as our pressing charges, we’d be willing to get him out.’ ”
Bush did, however, take exception to a suggestion attributed to former President Richard M. Nixon, that Hussein be assassinated.
“That’s unacceptable,” the President said.
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