Not all that accurate
It's an exageration to state that Saddam got "virtually unlimited US and UK support" in the 1980's. The US and the UK weren't even Iraq's principal suppliers, the Soviet Union and France were.
It's true that the US viewed Iraq as the lesser of two evils (a secular dictator perhaps being preferable to a barbaric Islamic theocracy) in the war against Iran, and engaged Saddam, selling him weapons and technology. At the time, it was perfectly plausible that this course of action was in the US interest.
Was there any viable enlightened democratic alternative in Iraq at the time for us to deal with instead?