Some young Iraqis told CBS’s Harry Smith that they think Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein.

“When the Americans started this whole war issue,” said one, who will be referred to as person No. 1, “we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we walked toward it. But when the war happened, that light was the American train coming the other way that ran us over.”

He told of a recent day when he “saw a body on the sidewalk, and it was covered with cardboard, and people were still in their shops, saying hello to each other and inviting each other for tea, and I asked about him, and they said, ‘He got killed this morning.’ ‘Oh, OK, yeah, see ya later.’ ”

“They are killing people for what they say, just like Saddam,” said a young man who will be referred to as person No. 2. “They kill people because the people say, ‘I don’t like (this one or that one).’ You get killed for that.

It’s not clear to me who “they” are; person No. 2 may be talking about the militias, or the Sunni insurgents, or the foreign terrorists, or all of the above. I do not think he was talking about American troops, because later in the interview the same guy said of Americans “I don’t think they’re here to hurt us or to use us or to take advantage of us.”

The three Iraqis said that they were happy Americans invaded and deposed Saddam, but now they’d get out of Iraq if they could. Person #2 continues,

“I think we had higher expectations of what the Americans can do. I hear it from many friends, who say, ‘Do you really want me to believe that America cannot fix this?’ ”

So, asked Smith of the young men, “You know people who would like it better the old way?”

“Yes,” responded No. 1. “It breaks my heart knowing that, because it was so bad, but now, they feel it’s worse, and they just wish that Saddam’s regime could come back.”

A young man, who will be called No. 3, added: “A lot of people want, well, ‘We just want Saddam come back. We don’t want to live this life. OK, dictator? We don’t care; doesn’t matter anymore. We just want Saddam get back. We just want our life to get back to before.’ ”

Yesterday Dexter Filkins of the New York Times reported that “armed groups” are pulling Iraq into chaos.

Even in a country beset by murder and death, the 16th Brigade represented a new frontier.

The brigade, a 1,000-man force set up by Iraq’s Ministry of Defense in early 2005, was charged with guarding a stretch of oil pipeline that ran through the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dawra. Heavily armed and lightly supervised, some members of the largely Sunni brigade transformed themselves into a death squad, cooperating with insurgents and executing government collaborators, Iraqi officials say.

“They were killing innocent people, anyone who was affiliated with the government,” said Hassan Thuwaini, the director of the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s protection force.

The government established a death squad that was executing people cooperating with the government. Good one.

Forty-two members of the brigade were arrested in January, according to officials at the Ministry of the Interior and the police department in Dawra.

Since then, Iraqi officials say, individual gunmen have confessed to carrying out dozens of assassinations, including the killing of their own commander, Col. Mohsin Najdi, when he threatened to turn them in.

Remember “as they stand up, we’ll stand down”? And the accelerated effort to prepare Iraq to provide its own security? Well, um, there seems to be a glitch:

The headlong, American-backed effort to arm tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and officers, coupled with a failure to curb a nearly equal number of militia gunmen, has created a galaxy of armed groups, each with its own loyalty and agenda, which are accelerating the country’s slide into chaos.

Indeed, the 16th Brigade stands as a model for how freelance government violence has spread far beyond the ranks of the Shiite-backed police force and Interior Ministry to encompass other government ministries, private militias and people in the upper levels of the Shiite government.

Sometimes, the lines between one government force and another — and between the police and the militias — are so blurry that it is impossible to determine who the killers are.

“No one knows who is who right now,” said Adil Abdul Mahdi, one of Iraq’s vice presidents.

The armed groups operating across Iraq include not just the 145,000 officially sanctioned police officers and commandos who have come under scrutiny for widespread human rights violations. They also include thousands of armed guards and militia gunmen: some Shiite, some Sunni; some, like the 145,000-member Facilities Protection Service, operating with official backing; and some, like the Shiite-led Badr Brigade militia, conducting operations with the government’s tacit approval, sometimes even wearing government uniforms.

Some of these armed groups, like the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police, often carry out legitimate missions to combat crime and the insurgency. Others, like members of another Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, specialize in torture, murder, kidnapping and the settling of scores for political parties

Oh, and yesterday President Bush said that Iraq has reach a turning point. No, really. However, it’s not clear to me if this turning point involves turning a corner, or if this turning point is in roughly the same place as previous turning points, in which case Iraq must be performing a series of pirouettes. I bet it couldn’t do that when Saddam was in charge.

(Cross posted to The American Street.)