[MD] Intellect battles the [immigrant] barbarians

[Ron Kulp]

 As an outsider to this thread I have to say, the original question was that of Saddam Hussein's  regieme being religious in nature.
All info I can dig up points otherwise..Platts responses seem  to smack of bigotry...kinda like lumping every christian in with the Inqusitions or witch hunts...I'm no fan of terrorism but as far as I know ignorance, small mindedness and brutality  have no religious or cultural boundaries.  
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي, ṣaddām ḥusayn ʿabdu-l-maǧīd al-tikrītī[1]; born April 28, 1937[2]), was the President of Iraq from July 16, 1979 until April 9, 2003, when he was deposed during the United States-led invasion of Iraq. As a leading member of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought his party to long-term power.

As vice president under his cousin, the frail General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces by creating repressive security forces and cementing his own firm authority over the apparatus of government.

As president, Saddam ran an authoritarian government and maintained power through the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Gulf War (1991). Saddam's government repressed movements that it deemed threatening, particularly those of ethnic or religious groups that sought independence or autonomy. While he remained a popular hero among many Arabs for standing up to Israel and the United States, some in the international community continued to view Saddam with deep suspicion following the 1991 Gulf War.
The Baath Party came to power in Syria on 8 March 1963 and attained a monopoly of political power later that year. The Baathists ruled Iraq briefly in 1963, and then from July 1968 until 2003. After the de facto deposition of President Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in the course of the 2003 Iraq war, the occupying authorities banned the Iraqi Baath Party in June 2003.

The Arabic word Ba'th means "resurrection" or "renaissance" as in the party's founder Michel Aflaq's published works "On The Way Of Resurrection". Baathist beliefs combine Arab Socialism, nationalism, and Pan-Arabism. The mostly secular ideology often contrasts with that of other Arab governments in the Middle East, which sometimes tend to have leanings towards Islamism and theocracy. Due to the party's mixture of strong nationalism with socialism, some have labelled the Baath Party a fascist movement, though this definition is hotly disputed and the subject of much debate.

The motto of the Party is "Unity, Freedom, Socialism" (in Arabic wahda, hurriya, ishtirakiya). "Unity" refers to Arab unity, "freedom" emphasizes freedom from foreign control and interference in particular, and "socialism" refers to what has been termed Arab Socialism rather than to Marxism.

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