Not feeling good about Greta's live tv report on Isis killing christians in Iraq

[TexasProgresive]

10. At least when Saddam was in power Iraq was nominally secular.

Tariq Azziz (sic) was a Catholic Christian. The Iraqi Jewish community has vaporized was at one time the oldest Jewish community in the world. His regime was horrible, but religion was not the driving force of the Ba"athists. It was Arab first not Muslim first. What G.W.Bush did was to break the structure of the whole area. Paul Bremer's plan of deBa'athification of Iraq was disastrous. It eliminated all middle and low level people who were instrumental in keeping the country on an even keel. Now the Shi'a who were repressed took revenge on the Sunni and everyone else.

The Iraqi Baath party was one of the tools by which Saddam Hussein maintained a tight grip on his country.

The Arab Socialist Baath Party, to give it its full name, was founded in Syria in the 1940s by a small group of French-educated Syrian intellectuals - Michel Aflaq, a Greek Orthodox, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, a Sunni Muslim.

Baath party member taking up armed position in Baghdad
Baath party members are said to be preparing to defend Iraq
The word Baath means renaissance in Arabic.

The party's ideology is pan-Arab, secular nationalism.

A committed Baathist should see individual Arab states as regions or provinces of the larger Arab nation.

The party is secular, and in the beginning, was steeped in Socialist ideology.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2886733.stm