Saddam Hussain was more of a military dictator than a fascist. Was his Ba'ath Party a Cadre Party organised based on an ideology? Of course they had Arab Nationalism and Socialism as an ideology. But that was common to the leaders like Nasser and Assad. Also there was nothing religious in their ideology or policies. Saddam was thoroughly secular in his thoughts and actions, and that must be appreciated.
Pretty much this.
Secular of course, but that doesn't eliminate Fascism.
For Fascism, it seemed to have all the unification thing going, and revanchist elements that are similar to many other Fascist states.
Saddam's Iraq could be best described as taking whatever it needed to from successful totalitarian states (the big two for Saddam were Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR) to achieve success in the construction of the Ba'athist regime. As it stood, Saddam's regime at its base level was a military dictatorship, Saddam was a strongman, and he relied on an all-encompassing state apparatus to keep power over his country, drowning in blood anyone who stood against him. He wasn't particularly an ideologue outside of supporting Arab nationalism based on ethnicity as opposed to religion (a common component of early Arab nationalism of the Nasserist/Ba'athist strain).
I don't really think that a state can be argued as fascist if we really have to dig deep into the finer points of the regime to argue whether it is or not.
Ba'athism, which was Syrian in origin, was ultimately an indigenous movement, it borrowed elements of classical Italian fascism and Stalinist socialism to make something all its own.
So, to make a long story short, Iraq resembled fascism, but was really too unique of a case to simply be labeled as fascist and have that be the end of it.