U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Sunday the Middle East would be more stable if Moammar Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power in Libya and Iraq, saying it's "not even a contest." Trump mentioned the countries in comparison to current efforts to drive Syrian President Bashar Assad out of power. "You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there, it's a mess," Trump said. "If you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there, it's a mess. It's going to be the same thing" in Syria, he said. Asked by NBC's Chuck Todd if the Middle East would be more stable with Gadhafi and Saddam in power, Trump said, "Of course it would be." Trump, who leads the field of Republicans seeking the presidency in the 2016 election in opinion polls, has said he supports Russian efforts to fight ISIS militants, even though Russia has backed Assad. "I think what I want to do is I want to sit back and ... see what happens," Trump said during an interview with ABC's "This Week," before suggesting that the Soviet Union's war in the 1980s against Afghan mujahideen rebels "destroyed" the communist bloc. "Now they're going into Syria, there are so many traps, there are so many problems. When I heard they were going in to fight ISIS, I said, ‘Great, let them,'" he said.
