Chavez: Bush should get death penalty

CARACAS

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed the Saddam Hussein death penalty and said it is U.S. President George W. Bush who should be sentenced to death.

"If sentencing is to be done," said Chavez earlier this week, "the first one to be given the most severe sentence this planet has to offer should be the president of the United States, if we're talking about genocidal presidents," the Miami Herald reported Thursday.

The leftist Venezuelan leader has often criticized the Bush administration for its war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and for allegedly trying to overthrow his own administration.

Chavez called Bush the devil in September, while addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York.