The Baath party has murdered, what, 1-2 million Muslims in the last 20 years? Saddam Hussein is, by all close accounts, an atheist. His government isn't especially Islamic, featuring people of different faiths and ethnicities -- Tariq Aziz claims to be a "Christian", for example. The Baath party has its roots in Soviet-style socialism, which is deeply antagonistic to religion, including Islam. Prominent Muslims have pointed out that Saddam is basicly an infidel.

So what can we say when Jordanians want to rush across the border to help support a regime which is currently shooting its own people? When Syria ships Russian night-vision goggles to a government which puts unwilling, unarmed women and children into combat? That German firms helped build deep underground bunkers for a government which had just finished invading one of its neighbors, and commiting torture, rape, and other atrocities against them?

How can all these different people hate ordinary Iraqis so much as to continue to help prop up their worst nightmare? How would you like to live your whole life in Saddam's Iraq? Think about that. Put yourself in those shoes. Think about being a person who would say: "If the Americans don't start bombing soon, I'll kill myself," and then imagine hearing that the people in the next country want to cross your borders to help keep him in power??? How would that news make you feel?

Even now, he sends Chinese-supplied missles against Kuwait to kill non-combatant civilians, not to mention the missle in the crowded marketplace aimed at his own people. And even now, the Russians ship more technology to him; even now crowds in Egypt hail Saddam as a hero, as their father.

I will not be suprised if the future shows a small holocaust is happening in there right now, with Saddam purging his own people in significant numbers.