A SECULAR MOVEMENT:

It's time to wake up to the deep, perverse relationship between secular despotism and Islamist fanaticism.

The proof stretches back clear to Saddam Hussein, who tapped into the deranged spirit of suicidal jihad more than many would care to recall. Abu Nadil, the ISIS leader U.S. airstrikes recently obliterated, was not just known to the West as the likely spokesghoul infamous from a videotaped beheading of Coptic Christians held in February of this year. He was also an FRL, a.k.a Former Regime Loyalist: a Baathist holdover turned ISIS governor of the Iraqi province containing -- surprise, surprise -- Saddam's hometown.

"ISIS's roots in Saddam Hussein's Baath Party are deep -- many of the group's most devoted commanders, advisers, and fighters started out as Baathists," as clandestine anti-jihad veteran Malcolm W. Nance has patiently explained. "The ex-Baathists essentially run ISIS, and their past is evident in the tactics they are using now."

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