Saddam at least in the early to mid 80s was always brutal, but he seemed more in touch with reality in a better at not pissing off the West overtly. As time went on he just got more brutal and his judgement seemed to really decline to the point were he was having his blood drained each day to have the most holy of all Qur'ans written etched in his own blood.
Then when every other dictatorship in the world other then the Taliban is trying to show after 911 they don't support this and its terrible Saddam has the Iraqi state run press praise it and posters of him put up with the twin towers burning in the background. Even Gaddafi, Assad and the Mullahs knew this was not the time to be poking America in the eye.
Saddam was never any less brutal or evil, but as the years went on he started to really lose touch with reality and seemingly became somewhat demented in my view. He wouldn't be the only dictator that has happened to. His judgement in the early 80s was better then his judgement a decade later and certainly better then his judgement two decades later.
Qur'an etched in Saddam Hussein's blood poses dilemma for Iraq leaders
It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur'an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight - locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant's legacy that Iraq has simply not known what to do with.
The vault in the vast mosque in Baghdad has remained locked for the past three years, keeping the 114 chapters of the Muslim holy book out of sight - and mind - while those who run Iraq have painstakingly processed the other cultural remnants of 30 years of Saddam and the Ba'ath party.
"What is in here is priceless, worth absolutely millions of dollars," said Sheikh Ahmed al-Samarrai, head of Iraq's Sunni Endowment fund, standing near the towering minarets of the west Baghdad mosque that Saddam named "the Mother of All Battles". Behind him is the infamous Blood Qur'an, written in Saddam's own blood.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/19/saddam-legacy-quran-iraqi-government
Then when every other dictatorship in the world other then the Taliban is trying to show after 911 they don't support this and its terrible Saddam has the Iraqi state run press praise it and posters of him put up with the twin towers burning in the background. Even Gaddafi, Assad and the Mullahs knew this was not the time to be poking America in the eye.
Saddam was never any less brutal or evil, but as the years went on he started to really lose touch with reality and seemingly became somewhat demented in my view. He wouldn't be the only dictator that has happened to. His judgement in the early 80s was better then his judgement a decade later and certainly better then his judgement two decades later.