Keep in mind that "recent past" should include the ten years since Gulf War 1, a period of extreme sanctions in which tens of thousands of people died due to lack of medicine and food (Madeleine Albright was proud of that).
Add the approximately 100,000 Iraqis died in GW1.
Only then can we add the count from GW2, which at ~10,000 (military and civilian) is a mere pittance in numbers but closer in time.
In a country with the population of Iraq, probably every single person has a family member or friend who died because of American military action or economic sanctions. These deaths have a profound effect, much more profound than Americans reading about a few GIs dying in the street.
The Iraqis have a lot to base their antipathy on, from Bush I & Powell to Clinton &Albright to Bush II & Powell & Rumsfeld & Bremer - a span of more than ten years. They don't see a real difference between the political party in power either, and if this experimental democracy doesn't immediately succeed then GW2 really was for naught as the whole thing collapses into chaos.
Saddam may have killed more, but how does one get a real comparative count between his dead and American-caused dead? And at least Saddam stood up to the American enemy who also killed hundreds of thousands with both bombs and economics.