Given the hundreds of thousands found in mass graves I doubt that. But numbers aside there is another difference. Today two sides are fighting and killing each other. Before neither side was fighting. One was executing and the other was being executed. You're free to see the latter as the more noble condition if you want to.
Those were war dead from the Iran-Iraq war.
In a way, it is more noble to fight than to be executed, even if it means more dead, I agree.
But I'd prefer to say the current situation is simply more violent and less controlled. Instead of being picked up by Saddam's gestapo, you end up being blown up on your way to the store. People are still living in fear, it's just that now the killing is more indiscriminate.