Iraqis, by and large, were better off under Saddam

John McCain: "We Already Won That One"

Monday 26 July 2010

by: Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

"Most Iraqis have less than six hours of electricity per day. Baghdad's poorer neighborhoods have as little as one hour per day, leaving them without so much as an electric fan to withstand the blistering heat - 120 degrees in some places. The electricity shortages caused thousands of Iraqis to join street demonstrations in Baghdad last month.

The political situation in Iraq is worse than it was before the US invaded. Although Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, he nevertheless raised the Iraqi standard of living to a respectable level. "Saddam [had] improved the school system in Iraq and literacy for women was phenomenal for that of an Arab country at the time," William Quandt, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Virginia, who has served as an adviser to the American government on Mideast policy, said on the PBS "News Hour." "People didn't go hungry in those days in Iraq," Quandt added."