Reply #82: I despise Ahmadinejad, I don't like Chavez.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

Ahmadinejad is an estraordinarily bad ruler - the attempts by many DUers to suggest that he's comparable to merely awful leaders like Bush show terrifying lack of perspective.

Chavez, by contrast, is a tupenny-hapenny South American socialist autocrat, who's doing some good things but in a bad way that will do more harm than good in the long term. If he left power tomorrow, his legacy would be largely positive, but unfortunately he's made it clear that he has no intention of ever allowing another free or fair election in Venezuela until he wants to retire. He's merely a bad ruler.