In Venezuela. Somebody needs to tell socialist authoritarians like Chavez that that trick never works.

What do you mean, never works? They're in charge and rapidly acquiring dictatorial powers, aren't they? What more could you want?

For every Castro, there are two Chaucheskus, a Saddam, Cusay, Ouday, Allende and a Mousilini who end up with a stretched neck or as a bullet stop.

The occupation of Dictator does have a very high mortality rate. OSHA would not approve of it.

And it only took, what, forty years for Saddam to be deposed? Or for Soviet rule of Romania to end?

Pinochet also barely escaped being lynched after the 1982 recession.

lot's of dictator's live long lives.

Mobuto in Zaire,

Shah Pahlavi in Iran,

Hafez Assad in Syria,

Suharto in Indonesia

Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan

Given the average american president goes 6 years,
for a dictator to go 12 is a pretty good run,

now, someone should run a study on dictators of the 20th
century with breakouts by region and national size.

Castro has gone 50 years, Stalin went a long time
mao went a long time, so did the vietnamese
The generals in South Korea,

so it's hard to say the data is diverse.

Already done. Parade mag in the Sunday paper had the top 15 w/ years in power and their age.