People believed this shit after the incubator story in the first Iraq war leadup?
Of course they did. It plays neatly into the "Leftist Radicals Want to Murder White Children" narrative that's been a mainstay of conservative politics since the 1970s.
Hell, from what I know now Sadam was de facto fucking retired by 2003, and day to day operations were taken over by other people in his governments.
Dictatorship always involves a tight web of ranking bureaucrats and loyal flunkies who implement your policies. Saddam's day-to-day operations were always being handled by other people. Anyone that's worked in a big business firm knows for a fact that the guy at the top barely has visibility, much less command, of daily operations. They can set broad policies and direct the lion's share of funding into different projects. But they have zero control over the on-the-ground actions.
That isn't even an effort to somehow absolve Saddam of the shit that went down in Iraq under his watch. One might argue that it actually endorses "de-Baathification" under the incoming Bush military government (because, assuming you believe the Saddam government was just a big genocide machine, it absolutely makes sense to purge all the bureaucrats involved in systematic slaughter of domestic residents).
But its illustrative of the contradictions in the "Saddam Bad, Iraqis Will Great Us As Liberators" narrative that the US propaganda team sought to create. Either Saddam is inherently wicked and the public supports his wickedness to the point where they're doing mass murder on his behalf daily. Or the people are generally satisfied with Saddam's administration because they're providing some material benefits that justifies periodic police state violence, at which point they're both living the same political gray area as the rest of us.
As we found out in the aftermath, it was the latter. Once the US implemented Regime Change, the new administration discovered it would either need to do exactly the same shit Saddam had been doing in order to keep power or fight a decade's long civil war against residents who do not see the occupation as liberation at all.
Of course they did. It plays neatly into the "Leftist Radicals Want to Murder White Children" narrative that's been a mainstay of conservative politics since the 1970s.
Dictatorship always involves a tight web of ranking bureaucrats and loyal flunkies who implement your policies. Saddam's day-to-day operations were always being handled by other people. Anyone that's worked in a big business firm knows for a fact that the guy at the top barely has visibility, much less command, of daily operations. They can set broad policies and direct the lion's share of funding into different projects. But they have zero control over the on-the-ground actions.
That isn't even an effort to somehow absolve Saddam of the shit that went down in Iraq under his watch. One might argue that it actually endorses "de-Baathification" under the incoming Bush military government (because, assuming you believe the Saddam government was just a big genocide machine, it absolutely makes sense to purge all the bureaucrats involved in systematic slaughter of domestic residents).
But its illustrative of the contradictions in the "Saddam Bad, Iraqis Will Great Us As Liberators" narrative that the US propaganda team sought to create. Either Saddam is inherently wicked and the public supports his wickedness to the point where they're doing mass murder on his behalf daily. Or the people are generally satisfied with Saddam's administration because they're providing some material benefits that justifies periodic police state violence, at which point they're both living the same political gray area as the rest of us.
As we found out in the aftermath, it was the latter. Once the US implemented Regime Change, the new administration discovered it would either need to do exactly the same shit Saddam had been doing in order to keep power or fight a decade's long civil war against residents who do not see the occupation as liberation at all.