Tom, I don't ever remember anyone on this forum saying that Saddam was a good guy and I know that you are using some source to come up with the picture of Iraq prior to our invasion. What you're describing however is an absolute hell-hole of a country, the type of place that would've driven its citizens into continual acts of retaliatory violence against its rulers. Saddam would never have lived as long as he did.

In addition, if life had been that bad for a majority of the Iraqi people, the troubles we're seeing there now would never have occurred. The Iraqis would've truly welcomed us with the open arms that Cheney predicted. It simply did not happen. The vast majority of the citizens would've worked against the armed insurgents and would've aided the Americans in the necessary intelligence. It would've been obvious to those people who to back in the occupation.

History is making you look gullible here Tom. You keep forgetting something. For the entire period up until Bush's carrier pronouncement and many months into the occupation, the press gave us exactly the kinds of figures you're quoting. News reports showed us the unearthing of mass graves. We kept getting reports that the WMD's had been found or they were closing in on them. Name one time during that period that we ever saw a bloody Iraqi body or a flag-draped American coffin.

The "liberal" American press you so often cite (who you might note is primarily owned and managed by very conservative people) simply started to figure out it was being coerced and lied to, that the rosy pictures of the content Iraqis were coming from the security of the Green Zone and that any foray out into the real world showed the hell that we unleashed. You refused however to acknowledge any problems, relying on the word of the very people that had the most reason to keep you misinformed. The only motivation you could ever cite for the left to lie about the good news in Iraq was some feeble crap about trying to gain political power.

Get this through your thick skull Tom. Saddam was bad. We all hated him. Many Iraqis hated him but in the end they hated more being occupied by soldiers that couldn't speak their language and who truly didn't understand their confusing culture.

Art