Is it good that Saddam is gone?

Ask the Iraqis:

A small part of Saddam's bloody legacy is on display in a nondescript annex to the former regime's four-story General Security Service offices in the center of Sulaimaniyah. The one-time prison, shut down when the Kurds achieved a measure of independence under U.S. protection in 1991, now serves as a museum.

Among the visitors this week were two teenage boys who contemplated exhibits such as electrodes used in torture sessions and a macabre noose brought from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

"Whatever Saddam did to the Iraqi people, let him get the same. In front of me. Then hang him," said 14-year-old Hunar Ghareeb, who said his uncle and cousin were killed by the regime.

He and his friend Ali, also 14, stood in a cell reading the desperate messages that prisoners had scratched on the walls. One such etching said: "I'm 10 years old but they claim I'm 17. Mummy and Daddy, the Ba'athists are going to kill me and I'll never see you again."

A museum guide who identified himself only as Halkaw said that as many as 40 women had been held in a single cell, where they were raped repeatedly in front of other prisoners, including their husbands or brothers, to pressure them to "confess."

"For Saddam, execution is too little, too little," said another visitor to the torture cells, Ahmed Hassan, a 32-year-old geologist for a local oil company. "People will feel happy when he's dead."

I feel bad for the Iraqis that we can't win there for them. Howard "the Coward" Dean said so. Then again, maybe he just longs for the good ol' days of Saddam's rape rooms like most of his party does. Just don't question their patriotism!