[TruJade]

Cobnat has a point
If Saddam had stepped down,
the puppet government brought in by the U.S
would still have problems with the people.

That situation would be just as bad as it is one now.
There would still be suicide bombings
and other atrocities, so all in all
we would pretty much be in the same boat

[Ninja Duck]

Seriously speaking though, if Saddam was willing to go into exile to save his people for money, if he really cared about his people he'd do it for free as well. If that had happened, America would have had a much worse reputation for invading and Bush would have had a lot more difficulties in defending his war to the American public.

When you have pretty much absolute control over a country, its people and its money, I think it takes a lot of resolve to walk away from that. When you're as rich as Saddam was, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have enough money to retire comfortably on some island that you bought once you're done doing whatever it is you do.

Then again, he could have used is own money that he already had... And, y'know, taken it with him... That would have been the better outcome for everyone.

[J m HofMarN]

As much as the CIA tried to have him offed, he needed that billion dollars to maintain a personal security detail. I'm sure there would still be people after him once he'd stepped down. I think his path was a good one, staying in his country and going down with the ship.

Anyhow I was looking through the archives, and I discovered this post between me and Civ 2 where we pretty much said exactly what actually happened, about a year before this story broke.

http://www.chefelf.c...=...st&p=136395