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 US 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 US prestige and claims of progress in Iraq.

Now, unrelenting violence and a US 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 US 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."

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