From: "Phil Payne" 

> I have to admit to being somewhere in the middle. I'm sure eee woz a
> nasty bastard but....shrug....go have a look at what the lovely people
> in Burma or ...or ...or ....or etc are up to. Then ask how it is that
> the communist dictatorship of the PRC is steadily becoming the
> trendsetter/thought leader in internal security even to the west...so
> ....shrug.
>
> Fine so parents get bullets to the back of the head & the kids get
> "state education". In many places they'd simply be left to starve.

Even Switzerland systematically removed gipsy children to give them a
"state education".

Saddam was brutal, but not on a daily basis.  As soon as word gets around,
you only need the odd incident -or a rumour of such an incident - to keep
people's heads down.  Mass actually brutality - especially in an extended
family society - just creates tooo many desperate enemies.

The "beheaded prostitutes" story never panned out.

It's much the same as the WMD issue.  He hadn't got any, but refused to say
so to keep certain people in thrall.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5