It’s a good question because I’d like to know how the person who posed it could consider Saddam Hussein “benign?
Benign in terms of the threat to the US at that time in 1991. Obviously after the original Desert Storm he was more of a threat. But he invaded Kuwait, and the Saudis at the time feared they would be next. And Kuwait was small potatoes, it was really Saudi Arabia we went to war far.
I pegged that whole "Desert Shield" and "Desert Storm" campaign as a complete fraud once I began reading all the stories of U.S. military personnel who were being ordered to hide any obvious religious symbols such as crosses, medallions, etc. while they were stationed in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. spent billions of dollars to protect the ruling royal family in a country like THAT? And this was to protect them from an Iraqi Ba'athist regime that protected its own Christian population and even included Christians in its leadership (Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz, for example, was a Maronite or Chaldean Christian)?
ROFL.