JEDDAH,SAUDI ARABIA -- The Saudis are eager to get their hands on Saddam Hussein so they can try him for his treachery. Yet, living undisturbed in sanctuary in this Red Sea port is one of the most despicable butchers in history -- a man who had the limbs chopped off his ex-wife, a man who once stored the heads of his enemies in his freezer so he could berate them, a man who chided Adolf Hitler for "killing too few Jews."

Idi Amin Dada, the one-time Ugandan dictator, makes Saddam look like an amateur. Amin tortured and murdered between 100,000 and 300,000 of his own people and, in a ceremony to gain power over his enemies, ate some of their body parts. His eight-year reign of terror ended when he was overthrown in 1979 by an army of Tanzanians and Ugandan rebels.

And when he had nowhere else to turn, Saudi Arabia took him in. Even Moammar Gadhafi, the "mad dog of the Middle East," washed his paws of Amin. Gadhafi first let Amin find shelter in Libya, and then threw him out. When the full extent of Amin's butchery became broadly known, Gadhafi publicly apologized for having supported him.

But not Saudi Arabia. The porcine Amin lives in luxury in Jeddah, having gotten away with mass murder. The difference between Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin is that Amin, a Muslim, was careful not to brutalize other Muslims.

The only people who were safe in Uganda, with a population of 12 million, were the country's 800,000 Muslims and the Nubians from southern Sudan. The Muslims were Amin's religious kinsmen, and the Nubians became his thugs and torturers. Sporting flowered shirts, bell-bottom trousers and sunglasses (even at night) the Nubians helped Amin eliminate about one in every 50 Ugandans.

Under ancient Muslim rules regarding hospitality and sanctuary, the Saudis felt obliged to give Amin asylum. But Saddam is another story. He is a Muslim whom the Saudis once called "brother." They gave him billions of dollars to fight against Iran (not an Arab nation). But when he chose last August to invade a brother country, Kuwait, he was condemned in Saudi Arabia as an "enemy of God." Instead of sanctuary like Amin, Saddam can expect execution if he ever falls into Saudi hands.

If Saddam had chosen to attack Israel instead of an Arab country, things might have been different. Amin, on the other hand, was always politically correct if morally repulsive. The Saudis were not unhappy when Amin led other African nations in breaking relations with Israel. He even promised to build a statue of Adolf Hitler until other African leaders talked him out of it.

In 1976, Amin welcomed Palestinian and West European guerrillas to Entebbe when they brought with them a hijacked French airliner full of Israelis. After Israel staged a successful raid on the Entebbe airport and rescued the hostages, Amin vented his rage on the one lone Israeli left behind, 73-year-old Dora Bloch, who had been hospitalized. She was beaten, shot and buried in an anonymous grave.

There were so many bodies to dispose of during Amin's reign that his men tossed them into the Nile to be eaten by crocodiles. But there weren't enough crocodiles, so the bodies floated ashore for all to see. About 30 of them clogged Uganda's key dam and had to be extracted by scuba divers so the electrical generators could be started up again.

Compared to Amin, Saddam Hussein's megalomania would have been tame, except Saddam had something that Amin didn't -- an army. He could threaten vital U.S. interests, and Amin could not.

To our knowledge, the United States never pressed the Saudi government to extradite Amin to Uganda to stand trial. Nor did the United States send half a million armed Americans to Uganda to liberate the people there from Amin.

In the new world order, there should be no statute of limitations on genocide, and now that the Saudis are beholden to the United States, Amin should not be allowed to fade into peaceful obscurity in Saudi Arabia because he is old news.