Great column by Anne Applebaum in Slate

I just read Tuesday's Anne_Applebaum column in Slate about Saddam:

The_Totalitarian_Template :
Saddam's place in the pantheon of modern dictators.

Have to say that I've admired Anne's work ever since I saw her on PBS' News_Hour a couple years ago discussing her book- Gulag , a_history .

One of the readers in Slate's "Fray" objected to this:

Write that Saddam really was an evil man, and you'll be thought an apologist for
George Bush. Write that Saddam's regime resembled Stalin's, and you'll be called
a right-wing ideologue.

...but I have to say that I, too, have encountered this phenomenon on the web and in academia- that we shouldn't say anything bad about the Sudan, China or Iran, because that would only "increase tensions". . .