The US administration has often described Saddam Hussein as a psychotic dictator despised by his own people, but this is clearly not the view of many people in Iraq. In Baghdad, CBC's Don Murray interviews a cross-section of Iraqi people on the possible upcoming US-led war. Overlooked by many of the reports so far, his findings highlight that many Iraqi people do support their leader Saddam Hussein, and are willing to defend him and themselves against the invaders, at any cost.

Murray's first interviewee is a well-educated professor, describing himself as "a man of letters and peace who lives with his books..... and now with his gun". Here in perhaps unlikely avenues, Murray finds where real anger lies. In immaculate English, the professor explains if the Americans attack, the gun is his only chance to defend himself and if the invaders are going to kill him then his only choice is to kill them back. Passionately he argues, "what right do they have to come to my country and topple our government?"

Next Murray enters a gun shop where the fear is regrettably evident across the faces of the potential buyers. A woman stands at the counter, a pharmacist, she too is buying a gun. "I have to protect my family" she utters, "my husband is not there".

Just outside of Baghdad in one of the many small towns, children play happily on a small, crowded ferris wheel. Protected perhaps by their innocence, they play unaware that close by another military checkpoint is being set up. Many believe the real battle will begin in these towns and villages around Baghdad.

In one of the villages, Murray interviews a young man whose father was killed in the Iran-Iraq war and who subsequently went to live in Utah with his uncle for a number of years before returning to Iraq. When asked by Murray whether he thought there would be a war, he replies, "I hope not". However he too states that he and the other young men in the village are willing to fight to defend his country and he and his friends display the old village weaponry.

The young man's grandfather is a powerful man, a Clan leader of hundreds of thousands of people who have supported Saddam Hussein for many years. He sits with his small grandson, a rifle resting across their knees. His message is as disconcerting as the image. He says that in the 1920s, his fathers and grandfathers fought the British with swords and knifes and we too will fight this war with everything we have. With bitter irony, the archaic sub-machine guns and rifles are the modern day equivalent of the swords and knifes spoken of.

Despite this the young men are positive and are quick to assert that they will fight to stop any invaders and are willing to die for this cause if it is necessary.