Saddam Hussein always seemed to me to be focused maintaining his grip on power, hence his head fake with respect to nukes, keeping the iranians off balance. Also, under interrogation he maintained that he regarded al-Qa'ida and other Islamist groups as religious fanatics with whom he would not do business. I get the overall sense that Saddam wanted to maintain his family's grip on power and terrorist strikes at the USA would have given us a pretext to overthrow him. Gadhafi OTOH is unquestionably murdered Americans via terrorism.