Amazing, just an Amazing world we live in.

Read this over and over. This is amazing:

"The students are disappointed in America and they say it now openly, even on the television: ‘Bring back Saddam and we will apologize and he will restore order to the country,’” said Dr. Saad Jawad, professor of political science at Baghdad University.

Regards,
Ames

This is just amazing. I can't stop reading that quote...

I'm not sure I understand the use of the ambiguous word 'amazing'. What do you mean? Are you outraged at the students? Are you frustrated that we've failed in securing democracy for these students? Are you surprised to find that a country riddled with sectarian violence and daily mutilations could wish for the return of a dictator who, while guilty of his own violence towards very specific groups, otherwise run a society with a lower daily death rate than we've been able to accomplish? Or that people would look back on the days when, though their safety was tenuous and dependant on where they lived and what clan they belonged to, they at least had some understanding of the parameters? Amazement says nothing.
Personally, this reaction doesn't seem at all unnatural to me - which is not the same thing as saying one supports the old regime's policies.

This is exactly what happened in Vietnam: prior to the war a million North Vietnamese fled to the south, prompting William F. Buckley, Jr., to claim that the mass migration was evidence of broad support for "the American Way."

However, in a July 1972 letter the US Ambassador to S. Vietnam wrote to Washington about how the Vice-President of S. Vietnam stated to him that the problem of corruption was the major flaw in S. Vietnam at the time, and, furthermore, the very reason China had fallen to the Communists was the rampant corruption which characterized the Chiang Kai-Shek regime.

Are we talking lots of re-education needing to be done here...?

That large numbers of a certain sort of people will embrace corruption as a way of life is grossly evidenced by the fact that grossly corrupt George W. was elected (almost) president and then re-elected (almost) president...

Look. I am calling it AMAZING becasue we were supposed to be the liberators and Sadam the opressor. This is why the quote is so AMAZING.

The students want total order over freedom. They do not have any faith that their country will ever be safe. This is what is AMAZING.