I’ve seen people supporting Saddam and I guess it could have been just a mistake or something, but it seems like such a shitty decision to make, and he also received support from the US, so I don’t really know what to believe there.
It wasn’t even once he was in power, it was 6 DAYS after becoming president. He accused the vast majority of the Ba’ath leaders and many members of being Syrian spies, and executed or imprisoned them based off of those charges. The Ba’ath party from that point forward became essentially an empty controlled opposition party.
This extremely strained Iraqi-Syrian relations, and essentially marked the death of socialism in Iraq.