Though Hussein's power grab was later, let's not forget the US support for the Ba'ath party takeover. They were willing to purge communists, they must be good guys.

Then we gave Hussein billions in aid, because if they're willing to kill Iranians they must be good guys. Even after hearing he was gassing Kurds, we tried to blame it on Iran and continued aiding him.

>Does he strike you as someone who can maintain a dynasty?

His reign, as terrible as much of it was, at least kept the country functioning. Succession likely would have led to problems, but it's nonsense to say that justifies US action. We ensured it caused major issues to avoid a risk of it causing major issues?

>That almost sounds like your average dictator blaming all civil unrest on "foreign meddling". Sure, you can blame the US or Wikileaks for exposing these regimes, or for running a couple of covert support operations, but it also takes a huge part of the people to actually do the uprising

The US is not the main reason the people were willing to rise up, but US action unquestionably influenced when and how they rose up. If you change your original sentence I quoted to "the regime may well have collapsed over the past twenty years," I think we're in agreement.