"Amnesty International, which criticized and drew attention to the brutality of the Saddam Hussein regime long before the governments which launched the 2003 attack on Iraq, estimated that violent deaths attributable to Saddam's government numbered at most in the hundreds during the years immediately leading up to 2003."

"The people of Iraq suffered systematic and widespread abuses of their human rights for decades. Mass killings, “disappearances”, systematic use of torture, political imprisonment and forced removal from communities were used by Saddam Hussain’s government in an attempt to wipe out all opposition. Yet for most of this period, the world’s governments seemed oblivious to the plight of Iraq’s people.

Political killings

Over the years tens, or possibly hundreds, of thousands of people were killed by Iraqi security forces – lined up and shot in their villages, poisoned with chemical weapons and executed in prisons.

Many of the victims were targeted simply for belonging to a community seen as opposed to the government. The killing of an estimated 5,000 men, women and children by chemical weapons in the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988 was just one example of mass extermination, made notorious only because journalists could reach the border town from Iran.

Other methods of political killings included mass executions by firing squads, burying people alive, drowning in rivers, bleeding prisoners to death, and targeted assassinations. Thousands more died in custody in mysterious circumstances. "
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/irq-article_3-eng

You don't want a government which has an "estimated that violent deaths attributable to the government numbered at most in the hundreds". What about all the unreport deaths not "attributable"? Do you want a govt which just shoots people without anything resembling trial. Do you want a govt which takes you from our home and murders or tortures you merely because you a member of some suspected group?
In America we have around 40,000 "violent deaths" from car accidents per year, but the govt doesn't executed anyone without a fair trial which determines whether or not you have commit a severe crime. Don't see a difference? No? Ok, I'll live in America, you can find some nice oppressive regime to live in- Iran or N Korea are still available [but perhaps not for long].