of living under a brutal totalitarian regime for a quarter century?: “…A minor incident, perhaps, but one that reveals many of the psychologically most debilitating forces at work in a brutal totalitarian state: the intrusive cult of personality; the ruthless indoctrination of children; the pervasive atmosphere of paranoia; the frightening potential for one inconsequential event, remark, or gesture to become grounds for severe reprisal. Today, as the people of Iraq are suspended between the death of the old system and the uncertainty of the new, the emotional consequences of living in this regime are most likely to be experienced by the victims, the torturers, and the millions of silently complicit citizens who simply tried to survive the 24 years of Saddam’s tyranny. As the experiences of Cambodia, Chile, Germany, South Africa, Rwanda, and the former Soviet Union have shown, repairing the hearts and minds of the citizenry may prove far more difficult–and more important–than restoring the electrical grids or the water supply.” US News

And: “the strained relations between Germany and the United States took a turn for the worse yesterday after a senior Berlin diplomat was reported to have told Foreign Ministry colleagues that America was turning into a “police stateâ€�. Times of London