[jimbob]

Okay, here's what I think:

The USA is a bunch of b*stards because they kept the whole world from becoming communist through the 60 - 80s. You don't like what they did in helping to create despots?... perhaps you'd have prefered a nuclear war instead of the cold one?? Or maybe the US and UK should have just rolled over and let the USSR have their way across the globe.
The USSR was a bunch of b*stards too, again for setting up nasty regimes in their attempt make the entire world communist. A million murders here and a million slaughters there adds up. Call me stupid, but I still think Pinoche and Saddam are the lesser of two evils when compared to world annihilation. Now that the cold war is over we can attempt to wash our hands of all the nastinesses that happened, but to Regan, Thatcher, John-Paul, and Gorbechevs (sp) credit they finally created a world that could stop with the clandenstine power/murder games.

Hind-sight is said to be 20/20, but the politicians of the era did not have the advantage of our hind-sight! They did what they thought could improve the world (to their world view) with the knowledge they had. It wasn't their fault that they were not omnicient!

In summary, I think that some people may be engaged in critisizim out of context... I think there may be just a hint of reconstructionism going on here. sure Saddam is nasty horrible bad bad bad, both now and yesterday. But can you imagine what the world would be like if the USSR had overtaken those oilfields? Can you imagine what the radiation levels across the world would be like right now if the USA and USSR got into a direct fight over the middle east instead of letting their proxy states do the fighting? As much as I hate to say it, men like Saddam had their uses at one point in history, but now we are in a new era, with a different set of problems and solutions. It's very unfair to apply todays realities to yesterday however...