Before Americans knew much about that war, rumors were coming back about this guy Hitler, and rumor/denial about some sort of holocaust, but relative apathy until it hit us directly.
Well, now we have seen in graphic detail, beyond anything we saw in Gulf War I, that we are dealing with unmitigated evil (in the form of Iraq and the islamofascists) coupled with complicity from countries (France, Russia, Germany) that had feigned support for civilization.
But from an Israeli perspective, this man has been financing murder of their civilians for years; they had a much truer understanding of the situation than most Americans ever did, a long long time ago. Now I think of Osirak and wonder why we the US didn't see what Chirac/Saddam were up to back then...