He's a uniter, not a divider.

I marvelled during the run-up to the Iraq invasion that Bush was the only leader who could possibly have driven France, Germany, and Russia into an alliance. That was no mean feat, given the little matter of twentieth century history. Well now he's managed to one-up even that accomplishment.

The administration's fevered alarums about links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda were incredibly ridiculous to anybody with even a passing understanding of Middle Eastern politics. Despite adopting some of the trappings of Islam over the past decade in order to stay in power, few non-Israeli leaders in the Middle East have been more consistently and vehemently hostile towards Islamicists than Hussein. I have no hard figures to back this up (because nobody does), but it's no secret that folks of that mindset make up a good number of the skeletons being exhumed from the mass graves.

Saddam didn't much put up with anybody who could pose a threat to his rule, and the Al-Qaeda would-be theocrats had nothing but revulsion for the heathen Ba'athist socialists. Just for evidence of their wildly divergent worldviews, remember that the Islamic fundies do not allow representations of the human form, like say, statues. And if we know anything about Saddam, we know that he was more fond of pictures and statues of himself than just about anybody in the region.

With all that in mind, how disturbing is this article?

American officers waging a major counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq say that the murky identity of their attackers is slowly coming into focus, and what they see is troubling. The continuing anti-U.S. violence in the central part of the country, they say, appears to be the work of an unlikely but deepening alliance between two of Iraq's most mutually antagonistic subcultures: secular Baath Party militants and Islamic extremists united only by a burning hatred of America.

[...]

And in an ominous new twist to the armed resistance in the country, Iraqi guerrillas for the first time appear to be attacking local officials and institutions that are collaborating with occupation forces. On Monday night, gunmen in cars tossed grenades at Fallujah's courthouse and mayor's office, the focus of U.S. reconstruction efforts in the hostile town. There were no reports of casualties.

"The standard wisdom is that the attackers are die-hard Baathists who have reorganized and formed underground cells," said Maj. Joffery Watson, the intelligence officer for the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, which is policing Fallujah. "But the fundamentalists are gaining influence. [...] The Baathists offer their military skills, but the mosques are the rallying point. They're the staging grounds for the attacks."

Or this, from Pakistan's Daily Times?

A shadowy group of Saddam Hussein loyalists calling itself al Awda, meaning "the Return," is forming an alliance with Islamist militants linked to Al Qaeda for a full-scale uprising against the US-led occupation in mid-July. The information comes from leaflets circulating in Baghdad, as well as a series of extended interviews with a former official in Saddam’s security services who held the rank of brigadier general. Al Awda is aiming for a spectacular attack and uprising on or about July 17 to mark the anniversary of the Ba’athist revolution in 1968, the former general said.

The Islamists have indicated they are willing to join forces to battle the Americans, even though they dislike Saddam and his secular Ba’ath Party ideology. A leaflet by Jaish Mohammed, one of two Islamist groups operating in Iraq, said it was willing to work with the Ba’athists despite Saddam’s repression of Islamic fundamentalism. The leaflet, obtained by The Washington Times, makes a direct appeal for former intelligence officers, security personnel, Fedayeen Saddam members, Republican Guard troops and Ba’ath Party members to join forces.

"The first act will be spectacular, possibly smashing an oil refinery near Baghdad," said the former general, who has been urged by al Awda to join the leadership of the planned anti-coalition front. The former officer said the effort goes well beyond the sporadic shootings in the past three weeks that have left at least 10 Americans dead. Al Awda is well financed, he said. It uses money stashed away by Saddam and his supporters well before the coalition’s invasion, and its funds are enhanced by bank robberies and the removal of huge quantities of cash from the central bank early in the conflict.

Or this, from the British news source, OutlookIndia.com?

A stream of jehadi volunteers from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and other countries have started moving into Iraq to join what is promised as the mother of all jehads against the USA. Before the occupation, there was no evidence of any links between the Saddam Hussein regime and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and International Islamic Front (IIF), despite apparently fabricated US evidence to the contrary. After the occupation, there are increasing reports of attempts to bring the dregs of Al Qaeda and the IIF from Afghanistan and Pakistan and of Saddam Hussein's Army and Baath Party together for what is described as a new jehad, the like of which the world has not seen before.

Initial meetings in this regard have already been held in Al Qaeda and IIF hide-outs in Pakistan. There are claims, as yet unsubstantiated, of Saddam being alive and of he and bin Laden soon issuing a joint fatwa against the US and the UK. More American troops are reported to have been killed in the two months since the occupation of Baghdad in April than during a similar period after the Americans entered Afghanistan in October, 2001.

Saddam, if still alive, remains as elusive in Iraq as bin Laden in the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal belt. The massive use of US military power, including helicopter gunships and tanks, have not so far been able to overcome the resistance, which shows as yet no signs of relenting.

Driving the Ba'athists and the Islamicists into each other's arms is more impressive than uniting NARAL and Operation Rescue, or PETA and the National Beef Council, or NAMBLA and the US Council of Catholic Bishops (okay, so that's a bad example). The man is indeed a uniter of the first stripe. Right now, he is uniting the country in the belief that joining the National Guard would be a singularly bad idea.