Here's a new one. To add to the media's laundry list of supposed failures in Iraq is a unique allegation by the BBC. Apparently Saddam Hussein had a soft spot for the gay rights movement, and now that Bush has invaded, homosexuals are being persecuted.

To many Hollywood left types, this must truly be the reason we shouldn't of entered Iraq.

"I don't want to be gay anymore. When I go out to buy bread, I'm afraid. When the doorbell rings, I think that they have come for me."

That is the fear that haunts Hussein, and other gay men in Iraq.

They say that since the US-led invasion, gays are being killed because of their sexual orientation.

The report says many homosexuals have been killed in Iraq.

Ahmed is a 31-year-old interior decorator who used to live in Baghdad with his boyfriend, Mazin.

Ahmed fled to Jordan nine months ago after Mazin was murdered outside a gym.

After his partner was shot dead, Ahmed hid in the gym toilets then slipped away and later flew to Amman, the Jordanian capital.

He says it was well known that they were a couple and Mazin was targeted because of his sexuality.

"I fled from Iraq because of the threat to my life, because I was a gay man," he told the BBC.

Ahmed also said that, before the gym shooting, he and a gay friend had survived a grenade attack and he still had fragments of shrapnel in his face.

The friend was killed a week later by gunmen who raided his house, he added.

Shame on Bush for getting rid of so benevolent a dictator.

Hussein, Ahmed and gay activists outside Iraq say there is clear evidence that the situation has deteriorated dramatically for Iraqi homosexuals.

"Saddam was a tyrant, but at least we had more freedom then," said Hussein. "Nowadays, gay men are just killed for no reason."