Quote Originally Posted by World's End Stella View Post
All it really proves is how much we undervalue a truly brutal dictator who keeps his population of nutters under firm control.

A man with whom you can do business should never be under-valued, no matter how much of a c*nt he is.

This 'hard man' line gets trotted out regularly and rather ignores the fact that these sort of quasi-socialist, kleptocratic, 'hard-man' dictators like Mubarak and Assad are actually shït at running their countries. They give the appearance of keeping the lid on, but actually balls things up to the extent of them becoming backwards, rat poor and basically forming a wonderful breeding ground for resentful hard-line islamists.