Iraq, like many Muslim countries, became a lot more Islamic during the 70s, 80s, and onward. The Gulf War and embargo weakened Iraqi structure and government a lot, and it's then that Iraq followed the path of many other Muslim countries and gave many Islamic reforms and concessions to appease Iraq's increasingly religious society. Saddam himself didn't become an Islamist by any means except in these reforms to gather support. This was the Saddam who would sometimes dress in traditional Arab and Kurdish dress for political reasons, military uniform during wartime and rallies for support for the army, and a suit on all other occasions. Even when he went so-called "Islamist", he was still smashing extremists and fanatics and banning such groups.

Let's not forget this is the Saddam who enraged people across Iraq and the Muslim world by making a Christian one of his top deputies, and kept him until the 2003 invasion. And no, this wasn't meant to appease the Christian population of Iraq, who were passive/peaceful and demanded no such power in government, not to mention Tariq Aziz was an Iraqi nationalist and Iraq-first politician. In fact, some Assyrian "nationalists" hate Tariq Aziz for working with Arabs and for putting the country before his specific ethnicity/religion. Sometimes I feel they hate him more than the US and the Islamic extremists which are responsible for eliminating their ethnicity from Iraq.

Imagine being a Communist ruling over hardcore Fascists. That was Saddam's secular nationalism to Iraq's overwhelming conservative population. Sooner or later, you're going to have to give some slack. Saddam would have ideally loved to have a secular population and push a secular national agenda with overwhelming support, but he was also pragmatic enough to know Iraqi society was in general not like that.

There's a very common cognitive bias where you believe that your environment and experiences are the same everywhere. I forget the exact name for it. But it's very common on this subreddit. People think Syrians and Iraqis are and were these secular, first-world, peace-loving, PhD holding people like they're used to in their suburban middle to upper class communities in America and Western Europe, and the governments in these countries do things for literally no reason (like the Saddam is a hardcore Islamist thing) but the reality couldn't be further from the truth. It may be a shock to Iraq's detractors, but the only time Iraq had a decent number of these people was during Saddam's time, but sadly, they were a small, small minority, and they dwindled during the embargo, and completely were gone during the Iraq War. Still, I don't think any Arab leader to date pushed education and modernization as much as he did.

If there was any truth to it, well, this war wouldn't be happening. Also, Iraq would have have completely recovered from the embargo, would have surpassed its peak milestones, and would be a near-developed country. Instead, all it's had for the last 13 years is becoming a global leader in corruption, being almost unanimously labeled a failed state, not even basic public services exist, criticized for its continued authoritarianism (impressive they can achieve that considering it's one of the most non-functioning governments in the world), among other reasons.