Pardon this hanging.

It is a bit ironic that this week we learned both that it seems the late Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon before any trial or even formal investigation was an act of great courage and statesmanship that healed a nation, and that Saddam Hussein is to hang on short order so that justice will be done.

Why is it that Nixon's pardon healed a nation? I believe the argument goes something like this: we were a bitterly divided nation and holding Nixon accountable for his crimes would have made those divisions deeper and threatened the fabric of our nation.

For example:
"The late Democrat Clark Clifford spoke for many when he wrote in his memoirs, "The nation would not have benefited from having a former chief executive in the dock for years after his departure from office. His disgrace was enough.""
http://www.examiner.com/a-477328~Ford_Remembered_As_Great_Public_Servant.html

Or Gerald Ford himself:
"But it is not the ultimate fate of Richard Nixon that most concerns me, though surely it deeply troubles every decent and every compassionate person. My concern is the immediate future of this great country."
http://www.ford.utexas.edu/LIBRARY/SPEECHES/740060.htm

If that were true should we not also be out demanding a similar act on behalf of Hussein? Why is it that the very same leaders and media echo-chambers heaping praise on Ford are either silent about the pending regicide of Hussein, or frothing for the tyrant's head?

"Speaking in the shadow of Air Force One on a Texas tarmac and at later campaign events, Bush called the verdict a "landmark event" in Iraq's transition to democracy, and aides hoped it would be seen as vindication of his decision to go to war. Democrats were quick to agree that justice had been done for a vicious tyrant but argued it would not fix what they see as the debacle in Iraq."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/05/AR2006110500774.html

Bloody tyrants it seems either must be set free without accounting or hung to shut them up.