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As expected, very well said.
What pushes Saddam up the list, to me, is what I think Hitchens referred to as surplus violence: that, while Stalin heartlessly imprisoned and executed, Hussein rained down fear on the population by the systemic use or rape and torture and paranoia in excess of what could be rationally said to be useful to him. Stalin certainly used much more violence than was necessary and was utterly unmoved by it, but he (and most of the list) generally used it as a means to power, not as an ends in itself.
The most frightening aspect of Stalin, in my opinion, is the complete and utter lack of redeeming human qualities: lack of loyalty, lack of honesty or consistent principle, lack of empathy. He betrayed, imprisoned, executed, or drove to suicide everyone who he ever came in contact with. What he did to Lenin, someone that many persons such as myself do have affection for, is one of the most overlooked examples of Stalin's cruelty. Lenin did not want to be a demigod. His wife pleaded with Stalin, who was already disposed against her since she knew her husband's wishes to prevent Stalin from ascending to Secretary, to not betray Vladimir's wishes and erect him a cult of personality. But doing so could provide a platform for Stalin to ride Lenin's coattails and consolidate his own power. So he struck a reasonable compromise and put Lenin's face on everything and built a mausoleum in which Lenin's body would be preserved and displayed for all-time.
I would say you have it completely backwards. It's inarguable that Stalin committed violence far in excess of what was necessary for the USSR to thrive: if you are to use that line of logic for the famines or Holodomor, then so be it, but that does not apply to the thousands of political dissidents and rivals who were murdered. The guy executed almost every single member of the original Bolshevik Party. He imprisoned half of his own family. That he was some devoted patriot or socialist ideologue is frankly very offensive and the latter is the single worst myth about Stalin, since there is (a) little evidence that he was any sort of ideologue, and (b) no evidence that his model was any successful than Lenin's, which was far more libertarian, far more progressive, and far less brutal.
Pol Pot, on the other hand, was somewhat of an ideologue. While Stalin was a sociopath striking at anyone who posed any sort of threat to him, Pot actually did have an insane vision that underpinned his violence. His purges were to scrub his project of intellectuals and minorities, and his slaughters were to operationalize his model.
