"When you see one of the two Baath parties broken, collapsing, you can only hope that it will be the turn of the Syrian Baath next,"
The bloodshed in Iraq makes that a distant prospect, yet the very act of humiliating the worst Arab tyrant spawned a sort of "what if" process in Syria and across the region.

On the face of it, those countries have democratic institutions like a parliament and a fairly free press, but anyone who becomes too vocal in criticizing the man behind the palace walls gets a visit from the secret police.

In December, the party mailed out complicated questionnaires to the 500,000 of its nearly two million members. It asked many ideological questions like, "Is democracy compatible with socialism?"

Senior Syrian officials react now with more tact if no less vehemence when anyone compares them to the Baath Party next door; the two parties broke apart in 1966.

CNN has actually ended up with a lot of egg on its face and shown the immaturity and lack of professionalism of its news managers. On Friday morning, its top news executives decided that the al-Zawahiri story had to be downgraded. Other networks showed more maturity than exhibited by CNN. They took due note of the story but did not go over the top as CNN had.


More than three-quarters of the Spanish electorate turned out for a massive defence of democracy in the face of terror. Every single Spanish voter was a soldier in the "war on terror". They voted different ways for all sorts of reasons. Historically, high turn-outs have favoured the left.


The thing about this year is, 'liberal' and 'wimp' have become decoupled. Al has been one of the real sparks of that. Liberals are ready to fight.''