Achaen (sp?) people, after the tsunami last year, on the fact that it's taking the NGO's so long to rebuild their houses:


"A promise is a debt. They aren't honoring it."

Furthermore, Saddam Hussein spent most of his day in court today telling everyone that he was tortured while in US custody. An investigating judge said there was no evidence of that, and the US denies it.

Saddam said something to the effect of "Yes, of course they deny it. But they are lying, just like they were lying about the Weapons of Mass Destruction".

Saddam is many things. Unfortunately, he's also a genius at public relations.

A friend of mine worked in Iraq for awhile for the UN back in 1995. There is a famous video of Saddam swimming across the largest lake in Iraq. It has a cut where he walks to the edge, then again where he's swimming in the middle, and finally when he's getting out on the other side. The average Iraqi, believing that they have seen him swim across the lake with their own eyes, don't understand that he didn't do it.

Furthermore, Mike said that at the entrance to many of the towns there are machine gun nests on either side of the main gate, with a big banner of Saddam between them, with his arms open. Mike asked one of the guys he was with about the military significance of the guns, and was told that they served no purpose except to impress the populace with Saddam's might.