It's his business card

It's a sign of the times in the Middle East that the most senior fugitive from the Saddam regime -- Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri -- can pop up in Iraq, with uniformed men at his side and cameras for al-Arabiya at hand, and give a speech that falls on fertile ground in its condemnation of an Iranian plot to take over Iraq.

The longer Bashar al-Assad sticks around, the more he's creating the climate where these guys can get back in business. Is this the most dastardly Baathist plan of all?