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It is traditional for states to call their own terrorism "counterterror," even the worst mass murderers: the Nazis, for example. In occupied Europe they claimed to be defending the population and legitimate governments from the partisans, terrorists supported from abroad. That was not entirely false; even the most egregious propaganda rarely is. The partisans were undoubtedly directed from London, and they did engage in terror. The US military had some appreciation of the Nazi perspective: its counterinsurgency doctrine was modeled on Nazi manuals, which were analyzed sympathetically, with the assistance of Wehrmacht officers.
The argument, then, was that we had to punish Saddam for his crimes by crushing his victims and strengthening their torturer [Saddam]. By similar logic, if a criminal hijacks a schoolbus, we should blow it up and murder the passengers, but rescue and reward the hijacker, justifying the actions on grounds that it was his fault.