Interesting fact from a March 31st column in Business Week by Robert Barro (my macro+politics prof):
Since 1979, Iraq's economy has "grown" -6.5% per year, the worst rate in the world. In that span, Iraq's per capita GDP has fallen from $12,000 to around $3,000. So Saddam Hussein managed to take a country with a per capita GDP higher than Hong Kong and Spain and turn it into a poor piece of shit. For comparison keep in mind that Iran was able to recover its economy in 2000 to levels consistent with its high period in the mid-1970s.

Dictators tend not to be very successful growth economists.