<<You mean that millions could still be liveing under the thumb of Saddam if he had of hd a reutation for honesty , or some means of proveing his word?>>
I'm having a little trouble following your thought processes here, plane. You asked a fairly straightforward question, whether it "was really possible" to take Saddam's word on anything. You got a fairly straightforward answer, a simple yes, with a simple example drawn from real life: on the issue of Iraqi WMD, it was "really possible" to have taken Saddam's word that he did not, and anyone who took Bush's word, that he (Saddam) did have WMD, would have been sadly deceived.
Your question was answered in a way that requires no further interpretation. The answer was clear and unambiguous, although not, I gather, what you expected it would have been. Not only does it prove that Saddam's word COULD have been believed, it proves that Bush's word CAN'T be believed. Not exactly what a good American from the red earth of Georgia wants to hear, but there it is. The sad truth, in all its unvarnished beauty.
Where you are going from there with your question quoted at the top of this post is kind of hard to fathom. Do you mean to imply that there is a relationship between the ability to hold onto power and a leader's reputation for truthfulness? In which case, how is it that George W. Bush, a known liar, still holds on as "leader" of the U.S.A.?
