A little over a year ago, we all watched the statue of Saddam Hussein fall in the heart of Baghdad. I remember watching the live coverage of that historic moment. Iraqis, eager to start a new page in their national history, enthusiastically tried to pull the statue down with the limited resources available to them – a length of rope that did not even reach all the way to the ground. Eventually, a group of U.S. Marines saw what was happening, and aided the Iraqi effort. Working together, the Marines and Iraqis brought down that symbol of oppression and provided an image that will be etched in our collective memory forever.

On that day, 25 million of some of the most talented people in the Muslim and Arab world were liberated from one of the worst tyrannies of the last 100 years. According to a somewhat popular theme these days, the world is full of bad guys, and that Saddam Hussein is just another bad guy. When I hear Saddam Hussein referred to that way, I can only conclude that there still exists a lack of real understanding of Saddam Hussein. In my career, I’ve known some bad guys up close and personal, people like former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and former Indonesian dictator Suharto. To paraphrase a famous vice-presidential debate, I knew these men, and Ferdinand Marcos was no Saddam Hussein; Suharto was no Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein was more than just another bad guy. He institutionalized and sanctioned brutality on a scale that is simply unimaginable to most Americans. Hussein ruled by fear, creating a society in which the ideal citizen was an informer. The superintendent of the Baghdad policy academy told me that he had spent a year in jail for having made a disparaging comment about Saddam—to this best friend. In such a Republic of Fear, friendship itself became a weapon.

I have traveled to Iraq several times. I have spoken to hundreds of Iraqis, both in Iraq and here in the United States. And one of my strongest impressions is that fear of the old regime still pervades Iraq. But, a smothering blanket of apprehension woven by 35 years of repression—where even the smallest mistake could bring torture or death—won’t be cast off in a few weeks’ time...

One of the most heartbreaking stories to come out of Iraq almost defies belief. Scott Ritter – the former UNSCOM inspector and an opponent of the war – has described a prison in Baghad, whose stench, he said, “was unreal,” an amalgam of urine, feces, vomit and sweat”; a hellhole where prisoners were “howling and dying of thirst.” In this prison, the oldest inmates were 12, the youngest mere toddlers. Their crime—being children of the regime’s political enemies.

General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was recently returning from a trip to Iraq, and stopped at Ramstein AB, where he was told about some Iraqi businessmen who had recently passed through on their way to the United States, to the Texas Medical Center in Houston, where they were to undergo surgery to repair some of the damage inflicted on them some ten years ago. When Iraq’s economy was falling into shambles, Saddam’s way of placing blame was this: he ordered that a few merchants be rounded up. With flimsy evidence, they were found guilty of destabilizing the Iraqi economy and were sentenced to lose their right hands. Black Xs tattooed on their foreheads branded them as criminals. The amputations were filmed, and the video—as well as the hands—were sent to Saddam. In a Houston doctor’s office, one man was quoted as saying: “You spend your whole life doing and saying the right things. Then someone comes and cuts your hands off for no reason at all. It’s a torture that never ends.”