Many of you are probably wondering how the Iraqi people feel about my trial. Well, most are probably torn. On the one hand, most are glad to see that I'm out of power. Yet many of those same people also miss the strict sense of discipline I used to impose upon the country.

It's kind of like a teenager: They claim to hate their parents, and insist they would be better off without them. Yet these same kids also welcome the sense of limits parents impose upon them.... Including the occasional dope slap upside their 15 year old heads.

A perfect case in point is Hassan Alwan Saad, who is the mayor of a small town north of Baghdad:

“He was a great president,” said Saad, 50, as images of Saddam's trial flashed on a small television. “He was a dictator. He did bad things to his people. But he was able to control the whole country. Today, everything is out of control.”

Saad obviously recognizes that sometimes you have to take the bad with the good.

A similar comment came from Raed Mahmoud:

"Iraqis would be more critical of the former regime if life were better today."

Indeed. With all the power outages that now plague the country, one has to wonder just how many people were even able to view my hearing the other day.