A lot of whites bailed out of South Africa, too. Does this mean the former regime was preferable?

Most articles like this tend to interview people who had good positions in Saddam's society, and lost a lot of that when Saddam fell.

Monkath Abdul Razzaq, for example, shows up in another almost identical "things are going to hell" article here.

A few more questions:

A lot is made of the increase in passports being issued, or students studying abroad. Without more than one point on the graph, these details aren't much use.

How many passports were issued under Saddam? How many students were allowed to go to school overseas? Maybe the trend has something to do with something other than simple fear.

For that matter, how come nobody ever asks in these articles "what were you doing when Saddam ran the country?"