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The people in Iraq lived essentially good lives. They had brilliant health and education systems. Saddam actually created an incredible infrastructure in a very difficult country, but they were a Mafia family. If you said anything against that regime or that family you would be killed instantly.

— Dominic Cooper

Sentiment: NEGATIVE

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✓Similar Perspectives

Saddam Hussein was a horrible man, and I am pleased he is no longer running Iraq. But the war was wrong.

— Ed Balls

When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity - what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions. When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things.

— H. R. McMaster

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator.

— Cory Gardner

Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly a brutal dictator who had attacked Iraq's neighbours, repressed and killed many of his own people, and was in violation of obligations imposed by the U.N. Security Council.

— John Chilcot

Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. I am glad he is now on trial for crimes against humanity. But, opposition to a dictator is not the measure I use when deciding whether to send our men and women in uniform off to war and possible death.

— Peter DeFazio

Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do.

— Bob Simon

Iraq is a country I came to know well and the place where I spent some of the most consequential years of my life.

— David Petraeus

Saddam Hussein has been brutal against his people, but when he was committing those crimes, the international community did not come to the rescue of the Iraqis.

— Bianca Jagger

✗Opposing Perspectives

We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.

— Colin Powell

The liberation of Iraq, which is already hard to justify from the perspective of American interests, at least had the virtue of freeing Iraqis from a brutal dictator. Despite all the anarchy and violence, life has gotten better for most Iraqis.

— Timothy Noah