World's Most Brutal Dictator since Pol Pot?

[Colin]

Probably either Amin or Saddam, I voted Amin only because the man was a cannabal who performed blood rituals on his victims but Saddam is nearly as bad.

(Speaking of whom has any seen the recent film about him? I'm going to see it tomorrow.)

I've heard that it was supposed to be very good and that Forrest Whittaker, I think that's his name, did an excellent job in portraying Amin.

[Colin]

Let me go through these one by one since I want to:

Robert Mugabe: He always seemed to me to be another African tinpot dictator nothing really special about him.

Efrain Rios-Montt: Bloody by Latin American standards but nothing compared to some of the worst on this list.

Mobutu Sese-Seko: A kleptomaniac who stole billions from his country but not incredibly bloody.

Kim Jong-Il: He is probably number three on this list. He has probably killed more people through famine than anything else. Insane, meglomaniacal, and a menace to the world.

Saddam Hussein: One of the worst. His chemical attacks on the Kurds and the vengence that he delivered against the Shi'ites in the South were ruthless. Definitely in the top 5 I would place him at number 2 or 3 myself.

Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier: Another pair of tinpot dictators. There use of psychological warfare through voodoo and the spiritualism of the Haitian people was a quite ingenious method for control and they had one of the worst reigns of terror in the Americas.

Idi Amin: An absolutely horrible dictator. A ruthless half-wit from everything that I've read about him who's reign of terror included killing anyone he considered "intellectual". As I said before he was also said to perform blood rituals on the dead and feast on the human flesh of his deceased enemies, which oddly he isn't alone in doing Jean-Baptiste Boukassa of the Central African Republic routinely feasted on human flesh and supposedly once served it to French Foreign Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

King Fahd and the House of Saud: Arabian absolute monarchs, theocrats, but not on the same level as the worst on this list.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi: His action are bad but are pretty much overshadowed by the terror that befell the country after his overthrow. Again, like the House of Saud, he was your standard Middle Eastern absolute monarch.

The Somozas of Nicaragua: Standard Latin American dictators, bad but not the most brutal.

Fidel Castro: Fidel has seemed to keep his brutality more quiet than other regimes, its there, but it seems like he just likes shipping his dissidents off to America more than anything else. Mostly standard imprisoning dissidents stuff from what I know.

Alfredo Stroessner: Another standard Latin American dictator.

Vinicio Cerezo: Same as above but bloody due to the Civil War.

The one I'm suprised isn't on here, and who would be in my top 5 most brutal, would be Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam Communist Leader of Ethiopia from 1973-1991. Not only did he basically start a scorched earth campaign against three different ethnic groups for rebelling against him he is also responsible for one of the worst famines in modern history, the Ethiopian Famine of 1984 which gave us that "We Are The World" song and "Do They Know It's Christmas" and Bob Geldof. His Red Terror, in which he basically told his supporters to go and kill anyone who they thought was against the "revolution" was probably one of the bloodiest mass political killings in Africa. Really a horrible and brutal dictator.