Ceausescu ran a police state for 22 years, turning a fairly prosperous country into one on the brink of starvation. He incurred huge foreign debt which he paid off by ransacking the economy of everything that could be exported, leaving the country in abject poverty. He killed off opponents while suspected dissidents were interned in labour camps. The man had the worst rights record in the Eastern bloc. Yet the Americans loved him and the British decorated him since he was also a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union. He refused to support its intervention in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
