The Shah of Iran was no Boy Scout, to be sure. But given the islamo-maniacs that succeeded him I would say he was certainly the lesser of two evils
The shah had his faults. He was a dictator. But he was a modernizer. And pro-western. And stabbed in the back by Jimmy the Traitor.
It's looking today like he was a "bad guy" in the same sense that the Serbians, the Russians in Chechnya, and now, President Bush are bad guys - they had enemies that they could only kill...or be killed by.