Donald Trump says the world would be a BETTER place if Saddam and Gaddafi were still in power

The world would be a better place if dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were still in power, top 

Republican US presidential hopeful Donald Trump said in comments aired Sunday.

The billionaire real estate tycoon also told CNN's State Of The Union talk show that the Middle East 'blew up' around US 

President Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, his biggest Democratic rival in the race for the White House.

'One hundred percent,' Trump said when asked if the world would be better off with Saddam and Gaddafi still at the helm in Iraq and Libya.

+3

Trump (pictured in Miami on Friday) said that the Middle East is worse now than when Huddein and Gaddafi were in power

Trump said on Sunday that dictators like Saddam Hussein (left at moment of his capture) and Muammar Gaddafi (right) would '100 percent' make the world a better place if they were still in power

Both strongmen committed atrocities against their own people and are now dead. Saddam, the former Iraqi president, was toppled in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and was executed in 2006.

Gaddafi - who ruled Libya for four decades - was ousted and slain in October 2011 amid a NATO-backed uprising.

'People are getting their heads chopped off. They're being drowned. Right now it's far worse than ever [than it was] under Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi,' Trump said.

'I mean, look what happened. Libya is a catastrophe. Libya is a disaster. Iraq is a disaster. Syria is a disaster. The whole Middle East. It all blew up around Hillary Clinton and around Obama. It blew up.'

Calling Iraq the 'Harvard of terrorism,' Trump said the country had turned into a 'training ground for terrorists.'

'If you look at Iraq from years ago, I'm not saying he (Saddam) was a nice guy. He was a horrible guy but it's better than it is now,' Trump said.