4. He said stuff like that about Hussein, but remember, Hussein was a puppet.
Assad, not being so much a puppet of the US, doesn't merit the typical progressive "but we made him that way" analogy. So you might be remembering his Hussein criticisms wrongly.
Meanwhile Hussein wasn't undergoing a civil war or an insurgency and thus there was no real comparison. Bush's invasion into Iraq was completely unilaterally, even when Hussein invited inspectors to stay, and they were told to leave by Bush himself.