BAGHDAD, 8 October 2004 — Is Iraq better off without Saddam Hussein, as US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair say? The answer should be obvious, but postwar chaos gives some Iraqis pause for thought. Few regret the downfall of a brutal dictator, but many are dismayed at the bloody mayhem that has followed last year’s US-British invasion to remove him.

“What are they talking about? Before Saddam used to take people away and kill them. Now we have thousands of Saddams running around the streets and killing people,” said Kawakib Butros, a 40-year-old shopkeeper, in Baghdad.

Bush and Blair say Saddam’s removal justified their decision to go to war, even as the other reasons they cited unravel. Chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer told a Senate hearing on Wednesday Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction at the time of last year’s invasion.

The Bush administration’s assertions that Saddam had links to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network remain unproven and have been challenged by a bipartisan US congressional report. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, however, maintained on Tuesday that there had been such ties.

Many Iraqis remain grateful that Saddam is gone, even if they are disappointed that American promises of postwar democracy and prosperity remain unfulfilled. “Nowadays it is better than previous times because income has increased and there is a hope that the future may be better than before. In Saddam’s Iraq there was no hope. The threat is from Baathists and intruders from outside,” said Wiam Abdullah, 27, a teacher in the mostly Shiite city of Basra.

Saddam’s henchmen ruthlessly put down a Shiite rebellion in 1991 and are accused of sending thousands of Shiites to mass graves.

In the Kurdish zone in the north, which was protected by a US and British no-fly zone after 1991, civil engineer Aswaas Hurdee said he was happy to live without the fear of Saddam.

“Just the thought of his rule returning makes me scared. It is true there are problems but during Saddam’s time we had only one choice which was to obey. Now we have options,” he said.

But in the Sunni heartlands of central Iraq, where anti-US insurgents are strong, some Iraqis are nostalgic for the captured dictator, saying only he could restore order.

“I wish Saddam would return, he is the only one that can stop the rivers of blood across Iraq. He can also stop the chaos that the occupation brought,” said Abdul-Salam Mohammed, 40, a car parts store owner in the rebel-held bastion of Fallujah. “Despite his dictatorship, he is the only one that knows how to deal with the Iraqis.”

Eighteen months after Saddam’s overthrow, a US-backed interim government is struggling to stamp out an insurgency that has turned cities into battlegrounds and introduced Iraq to suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.

A recent poll showed many Iraqis eager to vote in elections scheduled for January but doubtful that their security forces could protect them from armed intimidation at polling stations.

Even now, violence can strike anywhere, any time in Iraq. Gunmen accosted Muwaffaq Nouri, once a lieutenant colonel in one of Saddam’s intelligence agencies and then in Iraq’s US-trained National Guard, outside a Baghdad pet shop at dusk on Wednesday and shot him dead, witnesses said.