Four in five Iraqis believe Saddam Hussein was guilty of murdering and torturing civilians in their country, according to a recent nationwide poll in Iraq.
| The other 20% are Ba'athists and were polled inside Abu Ghraib. |
The Gallup Poll of Iraq found that Iraqis have grown increasingly impatient with British and American troops in their country, but they have no nostalgia for the rule of Saddam. "As much as they are looking forward rather than backward, Iraqis still want justice for past crimes," said Richard Burkholder, director of international polling for Gallup. When asked whether they thought Saddam was guilty of murdering Iraqis, 84 percent said yes; when asked whether they thought he tortured Iraqis, 83 percent said yes. U.S. authorities will eventually turn Saddam over to Iraqi authorities to face trial. The United States estimates that Saddam's regime killed at least 300,000 Iraqis; some human rights groups say the number is closer to 1 million. If an Iraqi tribunal finds Saddam guilty of murdering Iraqis, 61 percent of Iraqis say he should get the death penalty. One in five say he should face a life sentence.
| The remainder want him fed into a plastics shredding machine feet first. |
Three-quarters of all Iraqis have a very unfavorable view of Saddam. A more sympathetic view of Saddam comes mostly from the heavily Sunni areas of the country. In those areas, almost half, 46 percent, say they have a favorable view of Saddam, more than the number who see him unfavorably. Gallup released the first results of its Iraq poll two weeks ago. It released the findings about Saddam in the Gallup Tuesday Briefing, a subscription service run by the polling firm. The poll of 3,444 Iraqi adults was conducted by the Pan Arab Research Center of Dubai in late March and early April and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
| Pretty interesting given that it was illegal to have a differing opinion in Iraq for about three decades. |
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