In his 2002 speech supporting the Iraq resolution, he quotes Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker: “But Saddam Hussein is a figure of singular repugnance, and singular danger. To review: there is no dictator in power anywhere in the world who has, so far in his career, invaded two neighboring countries; fired ballistic missiles at the civilians of two other neighboring countries; tried to have assassinated an ex-president of the United States; harbored al Qaeda fugitives…; attacked civilians with chemical weapons; attacked the soldiers of an enemy with chemical weapons; conducted biological weapons experiments on human subjects; committed genocide; and… [weaponized] aflotoxin, a tool of mass murder and nothing else. I do not know how any thinking person could believe that Saddam Hussein is a run-of-the-mill dictator. No one else comes close… to matching his extraordinary and variegated record of malevolence.”

Strangely enough, McCain forgot to point out that many of those actions, including Saddam’s attack on Iran and his bombing their soldiers with chemical weapons, were sanctioned by the Reagan administration. At the time, our government’s only concern about Saddam’s use of poison gas on the Iranian forces was that it might make it hard for us to criticize other governments for doing it.

And when Congress tried to slap a penalty on Saddam for gassing the Kurds, the White House (Bush I, this time), blocked it.

So if Saddam is such an unparalleled monster of depravity, what did that make his trusted allies, Bush and Reagan?

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