Damned if We Do and Damned if We Don't

Think Progress reports on Tom Brokaw's reaction to Saddam's hanging, which is the same reaction many have had:

Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, who delivered a eulogy at President Gerald Ford’s funeral today, appeared this morning on the Don Imus radio show. Brokaw agreed with Imus that it is “difficult to imagine” how the execution of Saddam Hussein “could have turned out worse.”

“[W]e portray ourselves around the world as the champions of democracy and the rule of law,” Brokaw said, yet Hussein’s execution “resembled the worst kind of nightmare out of the old American West.” As a result, Hussein, who “had disappeared, in effect, as some kind of a symbol over there, suddenly becomes a martyr.”

I absolutely agree that the hanging was brutal and ugly.  I think Saddam deserved to die, but I would have preferred it to be out of the public's eye, and to be by lethal injection rather than by hanging, which I think is as cruel, unusual, and archaic as the guillotine. And I think his execution was rushed.  I would have much preferred that he be tried for the remainder of his crimes, including the gassing of the Kurds.  I think it would have been a very good thing for all the details of his murderous ways to be made public over a long series of trials.  Each nasty thing should have been reported in the press for people to be sickened by. 

The thing of it is, is, it was not up to me.  And you know, it wasn't up to the US either. Bush stayed out of it deliberately.  Why?  Because it was an Iraqi affair.  The point is for Iraq to be a sovereign nation, not a puppet of the US, which is exactly what everyone would have said if the US had taken charge of Saddam's trial and execution.

The brutality was an Iraqi thing.  The lack of professionalism, the escaping cell phone video, the the cursing and the mobbishness can't be blamed on the US.  That's just ridiculous. The entire fiasco-like properties of the thing are proof that we had no part, because if we did, it would have gone much differently.

Are Brokaw and other critics actually saying that the US SHOULD have been in charge?