"We tolerated dictatorships."

Editor,
According to Scott McClellan, the United States "accepted and tolerated dictatorships in exchange for peace and stability" in the Middle East.

Would someone please explain to Scott that ever since the 1920's Britain and the U.S.A. have installed, armed, funded, and supported brutally repressive governments in the region to prevent socialist alternatives from nationalizing "our" oil. Disempowered people there inevitably fell under the sway of idiots on the Muslim fringe, and western capitalists who created the conditions for this insanity persist in presenting themselves as the saviours of democracy.

If so many people were not suffering and dying for these travesties, what the Americans have done and what they say would be a hilarious joke.