Even the Iraqi government shows more restraint. It's 1916 all over again.
These are protesters being whacked with bats and shot by rubber bullets, with no reported deaths yet. Saddam killed 5000 people with mustard gas, and the current day Iraqi government employs summary executions against accused ISIS members. They are universes apart.
Compare the actions of the Iraqi central government to the Kurdistan independence referendum vs. the actions of the Spanish central government to the Catalonia referendum, the two votes occurring roughly one week apart. In both cases the central government considered the vote to be illegal. The Iraqi central government, despite declaring the vote to be illegal, took no physical steps to prevent it. The Spanish central government turned to violent repression. So, rather than absurdly stupid, the comparison is quite accurate – in this particular case, the Spanish government behaved far worse than the Iraqi one did – and stuff that Saddam did (nothing to do with the actions of the current Iraqi government which is controlled by anti-Saddam forces), or stuff that the current Iraqi government does to ISIS fighters (summary executions are abhorrent, but nothing to do with the Kurdish independence vote) are just irrelevancies.